Question

You are in charge of engineering a new cell line for use in an industrial-scale production process. The cell line must be eukaryotic and able to survive solely utilizing glucose for energy. Glucose will be constantly present to keep the cells functioning. The cell line also needs to be extremely energy efficient, cosuming significant energy and turning it into viable output.

Would the new cell line act more like liver cells or muscle cells and why?

Answer 1

Glycogen in the body is stored in two portions in the liver and in muscle cells. The liver stores both fatty acids and glycogen as energy reserve but muscle cells only store glycogen to get energy.

Muscles cells store the majority of glycogen because glycogen can readily be converted into glucose through breakdown and then it is used by the muscle cells to generate energy.

Muscle cells are extremely energy efficient and require easy source of energy constantly in case to function so stored glycogen provides glucose to it as a source of energy so the new cell line would act more like muscle cells which is eukaryotic and able to survive solely utilizing glucose for energy.