Glycogen And Insulin

Glycogen and insulin are the hormones in the body that helps regulate the blood levels sugar and glucose in the body. Glucagon works in such a way that it counterbalances the actions of insulin. It takes approximately four to six hours after eating, for the glucose level in the blood to decrease, which causes the pancreas to produce glucagon. The hormone signals the muscle cells and liver to change the stored glycogen back into glucose. Glycogen and insulin always work together to balance the blood sugar levels in the body. Insulin signals the cells all over the body to take in glucose from the blood stream. When glucose moves into the cells in our body, our blood glucose level goes down. The muscles and liver store excess glucose as a substance
called glycogen while other cells use glucose as a source of energy. In this experiment we would observe three tubes which contains Hepatic Portal Vein (HPV), Hepatic Vein (HV) and Mesenteric Artery (MA) with the aim to know which of them has the most glucose in them by the change of color because the greater the color change the most glucose, and the last tube to change color has the least glucose. I expect HPV to change color the fastest because I think it would have more glucose. Materials and Methods In this experiment, there were six test tubes in total for postprandial and Fasting with three test tubes each for both, the fist test tube contained HPV, the second test tube contained HV and the third test tube contained MA. We used a metric ruler to mark off six tubes at 1cm and 2cm from the bottom, the next fist thing that was done was putting the serum in each test tube then we added benedict reaction to each bottle before they were put in boiling hot water. Prior to putting the test tubes in the boiling water, a timer was set to know how long it was going to take for the color in each test tube to change.