An arctic explorer had been trapped on an ice floe with some Eskimos. They had l

Question

An arctic explorer had been trapped on an ice floe with some Eskimos. They had little carbohydrate or protein, but plenty of whale blubber, so they survived. As luck would have it, the first doctor they found on their way back was kindly Ol’ Doc Schreiner, frontier physician. She found the explorer to be in reasonably good condition. She stated that the blubber must have contained a lot of fatty acids with odd numbers of carbon atoms. She knew from her studies that a person on a low protein, low carbohydrate diet would be nutritionally better off consuming odd-chain fatty acids than even-chain fatty acids. Explain.

Explanation / Answer

Odd chain fatty acids get broken down into propionyl CoA whereas even chain fatty acids get broken down into acetyl CoA. Propionyl CoA gets converted to succinyl CoA and can enter into glucogenesis where as acetyl CoA cannot enter gluconeogenesis.

All fatty acids are degraded primarily to acetyl CoA. Odd chain acids are not converted completely to acetyl-CoA because the terminal three-carbon fragment, propionyl CoA, is converted to succinyl CoA by carboxylation and rearrangement.

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