This illustrated report will be concentrating on the digestive system and the detail of digestion, including mechanical and chemical digestion, extracellular and intracellular digestion. It will highlight how enzymes work within the digestive system, which ones and where they are produced. It will show the importance of metabolism and its two categories anabolism and catabolism, there will also be an illustration of how nutrients are processed during anabolism and catabolism. It will then go on to organs of the digestive system, specifically the stomach, liver, duodenum and ileum, explain in detail the process that happens there. To give a more in-depth look at absorption it will explain the function of lacteals and capillaries …show more content…
2.1 Mechanical Digestion
Mechanical digestion is the act of breaking down food into smaller pieces so that it can be processed more easily by the digestive system, an example of this is mastication (chewing), the stomach also carries out some mechanical digestion using muscular contractions to break down food.
2.2 Chemical Digestion
Chemical digestion is the break down of food particles through chemical reactions, this also begins in the mouth with saliva, chemical digestion within the intra-abdominal digestive system is mainly via enzymes and hydrochloric acid. The stomach releases pepsinogen which turns into pepsin and breaks down proteins, the hydrochloric acid provides a low pH level in which the enzymes can flourish. The combination of enzymes and stomach acid also help to kill any bacteria that may habe been taken in with the food.
(Kent, 2000)
2.3 Enzyme Table
Enzymes are important molecules, they are particularly important in digestion as they help break …show more content…
The duodenum has a unique feature of the Brunner’s gland, this specifically neutralises the acid chyme produced by the stomach. The chyme is blended with pancreatic enzymes, and molecules are absorbed into the enterocytes, proteins are broken up by pepsin from gastric glands and then further broken down by trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase and carboxypeptidases. Carbohydrates are hydrolysed by amylases and membrane bound enzymes convert sugars to monosaccharides. Lipids are emulsified in the stomach and then further emulsified in the duodenum by pancreatic lipases, small lipid molecules are absorbed by