Describe how a piece of steak in your mouth can become an amino acid in your blood that your cells can use to build muscle tissue, insulin, or other hormones

Answer 1

The piece of steak is moistened and ripped up into smaller pieces as it is chewed in the mouth. Protein digestion does not begin until the food reaches the stomach, where proteins in the steak are scrambled (denatured) by hydrochloric acid. This opens up the steak proteins such that the stomach's pepsin enzyme can start to break the amino acid chains of the protein apart. The steak protein is the consistency of water when it leaves the stomach. The smaller peptide fragments are then broken down further in the small intestine by the action of proteases that originate from the pancreas. The individual amino acids are absorbed through the cells of the small intestine into the blood. The cells of the pancreas can use amino acids from the blood to make insulin to control the blood glucose. The muscle cells can incorporate new amino acids into muscle fibers. This is possible because the cell's ribosomes can build new proteins from pools of amino acids in the cell cytoplasm.