IMED1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Alanine Transaminase, Alanine, Glutamine
30 Nov 2018
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Urea cycle: understand that ammonia is toxic and how n is moved safely in the blood and is utilised by other tissues. We must maintain a low blood concentration of ammonia. We cannot simply move ammonia in the blood. Attach it to the amino acids, and then strip off the amino acids and put it back onto glutamine or alanine. 2 ways to remove nitrogen safely in the blood via: glutamine, alanine. Ammonia is transferred to glutamate by glutamine synthase forms glutamine. Glutamine travels through the blood to the liver. In the liver: glutaminase removes ammonia from glutamine to form glutamate, glutamate then processes to -ketoglutarate. Then alanine aminotransferase converts alanine to pyruvate used in gluconeogenesis. The amino group from here is incorporated to the urea in the liver. It uses this glutamate and pyruvate via alanine aminotransferase to form alanine.
