METABOLISM

   WHAT IS METABOLISM ?

  According to the defination ;

Metabolism is the sum of all the reactions necessery for the living state of a cell or an organism. Overall there are many reactions occuring in our body at every time which are necessery for the survival of life . The reaction involve two catagories of reactions.

1)     The reactions in which large molecules are broken down into small melecules .

2)     The reactions in which small molecules combine to form large molecules .    

Fig: Metabolism

So metabolism is the sum of two type of processes .

1)    CATABOLISM 

  Cata means to cut , means to cut or break large molecules to small molecules . As we eat food which is digested in our body . For example if we eat meat in our food , it is a protein that we took  as  food . Now the next step is the digestion of this protein into polypeptides , peptones and  finally into amino acids which are the monomere of proteins .

    So we can say that in catabolism every thing is converted into its simplest form or into its monomers so we can say that it is a convergent pathway.

2)   ANABOLISM 

 Ana means to build or create , means to create or make large molecules from simple monomeric units . It is the process of the formation of larger molecules from small ones as we take the example of photosynthesis in which small molecules such as carbondioxide and water combine in the presence of sun light to produce larger molecules of glucose . The other example is the formation of proteins from amino acids .

 As a diversity of molecules is formed from simple molecules so we can say it divergent pathway .

 Overall a vareity of enzymes supports the process of metabolism . If the reactions stop occuring in our body , we will not be able to survive as living organism so metabolism is very important process in living system .