Welcome to MCAT Basics, your ultimate guide to the essential topics you need to master for the MCAT,

brought to you by the physicians at med school coach. Every week, Sam Smith breaks down high-yield

MCAT topics, ensuring you're primed for success on test day. Join Sam as we explore the most

crucial subjects outlined by the AAMC pulled from official practice materials

and third-party resources.

Get ready to elevate your MCAT game with topics tailored to maximize your score potential.

Today's guest host is Alex Starks.

So far, I hope car metabolism has seemed relatively straightforward as we followed the story

of glucose through glycolysis,

through the citric acid cycle, and even into the electron transport chain.

But what about when we're low on glucose?

Well, today we're going to start to explore that, and I'm going to touch on date pictures

in gluconeogenesis, including central mechanisms in hormonal control on the organismal level,

as well as what's happening on the cellular

and molecular levels.

All right, so we'll start at the zoomed-out level.

So as humans, our body can solve the problem of low glucose, and that's not just low cellular glucose, but also low

glucose in the bloodstream, by simply making more glucose. Hence the name of our topic,

gluconeogenesis, which really just means new glucose. Of course, we can't use glucose to make

glucose. That would be nonsense. So we have to create glucose using non-carbohydrate materials.

So this point is very important and helpful because a process like the conversion of

galactose into glucose or glycogen into glucose is not considered gluconeogenesis.

...