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Concept
Cori cycle
Summary
The Cori cycle (also known as the lactic acid cycle), named after its discoverers, Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori, is a metabolic pathway in which lactate, produced by anaerobic glycolysis in muscles, is transported to the liver and converted to glucose, which then returns to the muscles and is cyclically metabolized back to lactate.
Muscular activity requires ATP, which is provided by the breakdown of glycogen in the skeletal muscles. The breakdown of glycogen, known as glycogenolysis, releases glucose in the form of glucose 1-phosphate (G1P). The G1P is converted to G6P by phosphoglucomutase. G6P is readily fed into glycolysis, (or can go into the pentose phosphate pathway if G6P concentration is high) a process that provides ATP to the muscle cells as an energy source. During muscular activity, the store of ATP needs to be constantly replenished. When the supply of oxygen is sufficient, this energy comes from feeding pyruvate, one product of glycolysis, into the citric acid cycle, which ultimately generates ATP through oxygen-dependent oxidative phosphorylation.
When oxygen supply is insufficient, typically during intense muscular activity, energy must be released through anaerobic metabolism. Lactic acid fermentation converts pyruvate to lactate by lactate dehydrogenase. Most importantly, fermentation regenerates NAD+, maintaining its concentration so additional glycolysis reactions can occur. The fermentation step oxidizes the NADH produced by glycolysis back to NAD+, transferring two electrons from NADH to reduce pyruvate into lactate. (Refer to the main articles on glycolysis and fermentation for the details.)
Instead of accumulating inside the muscle cells, lactate produced by anaerobic fermentation is taken up by the liver. This initiates the other half of the Cori cycle. In the liver, gluconeogenesis occurs. From an intuitive perspective, gluconeogenesis reverses both glycolysis and fermentation by converting lactate first into pyruvate, and finally back to glucose.
Official source
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