Publication Date:
1989-02-10
Description:
Animals clearly choose what they eat and can even choose among chemically different sugars. The physiological and biochemical mechanisms that constrain feeding choices are largely unknown. In this study, European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) preferred mixture solutions of D-glucose plus D-fructose to equimolar (double molar caloric value) solutions of sucrose. Intubation feeding of sucrose did not increase blood glucose levels. Sucrose is a useless energy source for these birds because they lack a single digestive enzyme (sucrase) on the small intestinal brush border membrane. However, the membranes possessed separate maltase and isomaltase disaccharidases. This expression pattern and expression patterns of membrane disaccharidases among mammals suggest a role for intestinal enzymes in the coevolutionary interactions between vertebrates and their plant food sources.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Martinez del Rio, C -- Stevens, B R -- DK-38715/DK/NIDDK NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1989 Feb 10;243(4892):794-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Zoology, University of Florida, Gainesville 32611.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2916126" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Biological Evolution
;
Birds/*physiology
;
Disaccharidases/physiology
;
Disaccharides/metabolism
;
Feeding Behavior/*physiology
;
Intestinal Mucosa/enzymology
;
Intestines/*physiology
;
Microvilli/enzymology
;
Sucrase/metabolism
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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