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If Liver Enzymes Relate to Diabetes?
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Diabetes may need info from this liver cell. It is common knowledge that diabete patients may need injection of insulin to reduce blood sugar concentration. But, very few people, even doctors, realize that liver function may have profound inference to diabetes as well. When an athlete runs a Marathon, he needs a lot of energy. His muscle contraction needs ATP. ATP is generated from glucose which is a kind of blood sugar, while blood sugar is supplies by liver cells by enzyme digestion of glycogen (glycogenolysis, such as glycogen phosporylase), and those glycogen was previously synthesized and stored inside hepatocytes under the action by another kinds of enzymes including PEPCK and glycogen synthase when the concentration of blood sugar at portal tract was high after food up-taking. My research found that there are two gradients of liver carbohydrate metabolism enzymes. One enzyme gradient is higher in portal tract areas but is lower in central vein areas, and another enzyme’s gradient is reversed. The activity of some of those enzymes may be regulated by insulin. I guess that if a person’s liver has disease, or, abnormality in hepatic carbohydrate enzymes synthesis, one may possibly develop diabetes and difficult to cure by insulin injection alone. That is why I heard that some Chinese herb medicine doctors use herbs that are good for liver to help cure diabetes patients. The image that I produced is a high magnification of one and 2 half hepatocytes showing a specific carbohydrate enzyme molecules (in rose red color) distribution which is limited in micro-areas only in cytosol (light blue color). The cell nucleus (blue-black color) is located in the center of the cell. The experiment includes the used of PEG embedding and section, immunohistochemical stain with nano-gold labeled antibody against carbohydrate enzyme, colloidal gold silver enhancement, re-embedding the immunostained section in plastic resin, further cut the 5 micro section (after peeled off) to 20 pieces (0.25 micron), detect the signal from thin section with high power lens epipolarization microscope, computerized pseudocolor image processing, etc. (Refer to: Histochemistry, 99,341-346, 1993; J. Histochem. Cytochem., 42,1651-1653, 1994; JMSA, 1:4,151-161, 1995.)
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