Intermediary metabolism

norcalguy
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:01:37 +0000

Like most things you’ll learn in med school, the material is presented briefly and then you’ll be expected to memorize/learn everything on your own. We didn’t really need to know a ton of detail on each pathway. For example for glycolysis, we needed to know the first few steps: glucose–>glucose-6-phosphate–>fructose-6-phosphate–>fructose-1-6-bisphosphate---------->pyruvate–>acetyl CoA. We had to know the key enzymes hexokinase, phosphofructokinase-1, pyruvate kinase, the dehydrogenases and their regulation. For example, we had to know PFK-1 is positively regulated by AMP, fructose-2,6-bisphosphate, fructose-6-phosphate and negatively regulated by ATP, fructose-1,6-bisphosphate, glucagon, etc. And obviously you had to know that you get 2 NADH and 2 ATP and 2 pyruvates from each cycle.

About that level of detail for each pathway.

And that constituted 4 days of lectures for us. Obviously, that wasn’t everything we learned in the lecture that week. That was just the biochem component. We were also learning genetics and cell bio at the same time since we have an integrated curriculum.

The exam tested 5 weeks worth of lectures and the mean was a 87% so the material couldn’t have been too hard. Med students generally do whatever is necessary to get the job done.