Slide Set: 9: Digestive System Flashcards
What is mass balance in the digestive system
To maintain homeostasis, the volume of fluid entering the GI tract by intake or secretion must equal the volume leaving the lumen.
4 processes of the digestive system
- Digestion: Chemical and mechanical breakdown
- Absorption: Movement of material from GI lumen to ECF
- Motility: movement by muscle contraction
- Secretion: hormones and enzymes
Primary function of the digestive system
–Transfer nutrients, water, and electrolytes from ingested food into body’s internal environment
–Ingested food is essential an energy source and for supplies for the building blocks of tissues
Salivary glands
sublingual
submandibular glands
parotid glands
Chyme
The stomach continues digestion that began in the mouth by mixing food with acid and enzymes to create chyme.
What happens to the products that are digested and absorbed?
- absorbed
- move into the blood or lymph for distribution
- waste remaining leaves the body through anus
esophagus
a narrow tube that travels through the thorax to the abdomen.
stomach
a baglike organ that can hold as much as 2 liters of food and fluid when fully (if uncomfortably) expanded.
The stomach is divided into three sections:
fundus
body
pyloric region
pylorus
opening between the stomach and the small intestine is guarded by the pyloric valve.
what is the function of pyloric valve
thickened band of smooth muscle relaxes to allow only small amounts of chyme into the small intestine at any one time.
small intestine is divided into three sections:
- duodenum
- jejunum
- ileum
What happens in the large intestine?
water and electrolytes are absorbed out of the chyme to form feces
rectum
distension of the rectal wall triggers a defecation reflex.
anus
Feces leave the GI tract through the anus, with its external anal sphincter of skeletal muscle, which is under voluntary control.
The GI tract wall consists of four layers:
(1) mucosa
(2) submucosa,
(3) muscularis externa
(4) serosa.
Mucosa layers
- mucous membrane
- lamina propria
- muscular mucosa
The entire wall is crumpled into folds called ____ in the stomach, and ____ in the small intestine.
rugae
plicae
The intestinal mucosa also projects into the lumen in small fingerlike extensions known as _____
villi
Where is submucosa found and what is its function?
The layer of the gut wall adjacent to the mucosa, the submucosa, is composed of connective tissue with larger blood and lymph vessels
muscularis externa consists primarily of two layers of smooth muscle: (functions)
- inner circular layer –> contraction decreases diameter of lumen
- outer longitudinal layer –> shortens the tube
Motility in the gastrointestinal tract serves two purposes:
- moving food from the mouth to the anus
- mechanically mixing food
- mixing maximizes exposure of the particles to digestive enzymes by increasing particle surface area.
What happens during peristalsis? how does it propagate?
- wave movements
- circular muscles contract just behind bolus
- contraction pushes the bolus forward
- circular muscles are relaxed
- receiving segment then contracts
how do segmental contractions occur, which muscles are involved and what is the purpose
- segments of intestine alternately contract and relax.
- In the contracting segments, circular muscles contract while longitudinal muscles relax.
- Alternating segmental contractions churn the intestinal contents, mixing them and keeping them in contact with the absorptive epithelium.
migrating motor complex (MMC)
is a series of contractions that begin in the empty stomach and end in the large intestine.
What are Slow waves
are spontaneous depolarizations in GI smooth muscle
What are tonic contractions
that are sustained for minutes or hours occur in some smooth muscle sphincters and in the anterior portion of the stomach.
What are phasic contractions
with contraction-relaxation cycles lasting only a few seconds, occur in the posterior region of the stomach and in the small intestine.
________ deep in the gastric glands secrete hydrochloric acid into the lumen of the stomach.
Parietal cells
_______ in the small intestine and colon secrete an isotonic NaCl solution that mixes with mucus secreted by goblet cells to help lubricate the contents of the gut.
Crypt cells
Mucus is a viscous secretion composed primarily of glycoproteins collectively called _____. The primary functions of mucus are to form a protective coating over the GI mucosa and to lubricate the contents of the gut. Mucus is made in specialized exocrine cell called _______ in the stomach, ______ in salivary glands, and goblet cells in the intestine
mucins
mucous cells
serous cells
What is bile and where is it secreted from?
Bile is a non-enzymatic solution secreted from hepatocytes, or liver cells
The key components of bile are
(1) bile salts, which facilitate enzymatic fat digestion,
(2) bile pigments, such as bilirubin, which are the waste products of hemoglobin degradation, and
(3) cholesterol, which is excreted in the feces.
Bile salts, which act as detergents to solubilize fats during digestion, are made from
steroid bile acids combined with amino acids.
Bile is secreted into _____ that lead to the ______, which stores and concentrates the bile solution. During a meal, contraction of the gallbladder sends bile into the duodenum through the ______, along with a watery solution of bicarbonate and digestive enzymes from the pancreas.
hepatic ducts
gallbladder
common bile duct
Once absorbed, most nutrients enter capillaries within the villi. e exception is fats, which mostly enter lymph vessels called ________.
lacteals
The enzyme _____ breaks long glucose polymers into smaller glucose chains and into the disaccharide maltose.
amylase
The transporters that are used by the intestinal cells to transport monosaccharides are
identical to those found in the renal proximal tubule: the apical Na+-glucose SGLT symporter and the basolateral GLUT2 transporter
True/False
Fructose absorption is Na+-dependent.
False
Fructose absorption, however, is not Na+-dependent. Fructose moves across the apical membrane by facilitated diffusion on the GLUT5 transporter and across the basolateral membrane by GLUT2
The enzymes for protein digestion are classi ed into two broad groups: ______ and _______.
endopeptidases
exopeptidases
Endopeptidases, more commonly called _______, attack peptide bonds in the interior of the amino acid chain and break a long peptide chain into smaller fragments.
proteases
Proteases are secreted as inactive ______ from epithelial cells in the stomach, intestine, and pancreas and are activated in the GI tract lumen. Examples of proteases include ______ secreted in the stomach, and _____ and ________ secreted by the pancreas.
proenzymes
pepsin
trypsin
chymotrypsin
________ release single amino acids from peptides by chopping them o the ends, one at a time.
Exopeptidases
The most important digestive exopeptidases are two isozymes of _________ secreted by the pancreas. ________ play a lesser role in digestion.
carboxypeptidase
Aminopeptidases
How are amino acids absorbed in the intestines?
Most free amino acids are carried by Na+-dependent cotransport proteins similar to those in the proximal tubule of the kidney. A few amino acid transporters are H+-dependent.
What are lipases and how do they act?
Enzymatic fat digestion is carried out by lipases, enzymes that remove two fatty acids from each triglyceride molecule.
The bile salt coating of the intestinal emulsion complicates digestion, however, because lipase is unable to penetrate the bile salts. So what happens?
For this reason, fat digestion also requires colipase, a protein cofactor secreted by the pancreas. Colipase displaces some bile salts, allowing lipase access to fats inside the bile salt coating. Phospholipids are digested by pancreatic phospholipase. Free cholesterol need not be digested before be- ing absorbed.