Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Phrase of the week

Rather than bore you with my whining about how impenetrable some of my syllabus pages are, I thought I'd give a sample:

"Conversion of phosphorylase A to phosphorylase B is by protein phosphatase, which dephosphorylates phoshporylase A, resulting in the inactivation of this enzyme. Phosphorylase kinase activates glycogen phosphorylase by serine phosphorylation."

After many tortuous hours of study and some fortuitous revelation, I can now tell you what this means. The readable version would be this:

Conversion of A ---> B happens by addition of a phosphate group.

The reverse, B ---->A, occurs by the removal of this phosphate group.

2 different enzymes participate in these reactions.

Phosphatase kinase adds phosphate to B, making A.

Protein Phosphatase removes phosphate from A, making B.

A is active, B is inactive.

Active protein has a phosphate then.

Tell me which is clearer.

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