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The chemical reactions involved in digestion can be clarified by an account of the digestion of maltose sugar. Maltose is, technically, a double sugar, since it is composed of two molecules of the simple sugar glucose bonded together. The digestive enzyme maltase catalyzes a reaction in which a molecule of water is inserted at the point at which the two glucose units are linked, thereby disconnecting them, as illustrated below.
In chemical terms, the maltose has been hydrolyzed. All digestive enzymes act in a similar way and thus are hydrolyzing enzymes.
Many other nutrient molecules are much more complex, being polymers, or long chains of simple component units. Starch, for example, is a carbohydrate, like maltose, but its molecules are composed of thousands of glucose units bonded together. Even so, the digestion of starch is essentially the same as the digestion of maltose: each linkage between adjacent glucose units is hydrolyzed, with the result that the starch molecule is split into thousands of glucose molecules. Protein molecules also are polymers, but their constituent units are amino acids instead of simple sugars. Proteolytic (i.e., protein-digesting) enzymes split the protein chains by hydrolyzing the bonds between adjacent amino acids. Because as many as 20 different kinds of amino acids may act as building blocks for proteins, the complete digestion of a protein into its amino acids requires the action of several different proteolytic enzymes, each capable of hydrolyzing the bonds between particular pairs of amino acids. Fat molecules too are composed of smaller building-block units (the alcohol glycerol plus three fatty acid groups); they are hydrolyzed by the enzyme lipase.
Various other classes of compounds are digested by hydrolytic enzymes specific for them. Not all of these enzymes occur in every organism; for example, few animals possess cellulase (cellulose-digesting enzyme), despite the fact that cellulose constitutes much of the total bulk of the food ingested by plant-eating animals. Some nonetheless benefit from the cellulose in their diet because their digestive tracts contain microorganisms (known as symbionts) capable of digesting cellulose. The herbivores absorb some of the products of their symbionts’ digestive activity.
So far, emphasis has been placed on the role of digestion in converting large complex molecules into smaller simpler ones that can move across membranes, which thus permits absorption of food into cells. The same processes occur when substances must be moved from cell to cell within a multicellular organism. Thus, green plants, which do not have to digest incoming nutrients, digest stored material, such as starch, before it can be transported from storage organs (tubers, bulbs, corms) to points of utilization, such as growing buds.
Animals that ingest bulk food unavoidably take in some matter that they are incapable of using. In the case of unicellular organisms that form food vacuoles, the vacuoles eventually fuse with the cell membrane and then rupture, releasing indigestible wastes to the outside. Substances that cannot be digested, such as cellulose, pass into the colon, or large intestine. There water and ions such as sodium and chloride are reabsorbed, and the remaining solid material is held until it is expelled through the anus.
Fecal constituents in species with an alimentary canal also include cast-off effete (damaged or worn-out) cells from the living mucous membrane and, in higher animals, bacteria that exist in the intestine in a symbiotic relationship. In the higher animals, the life span of a cell from the mucosal epithelium is four to eight days, and the life span of the specialized cells, such as the acid-secreting parietal cells located in the stomach, is one to three years.
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