digestion

—digestional, adj.

/di jes"cheuhn, duy-/, n.

1. the process in the alimentary canal by which food is broken up physically, as by the action of the teeth, and chemically, as by the action of enzymes, and converted into a substance suitable for absorption and assimilation into the body.

2. the function or power of digesting food: My digestion is bad.

3. the act of digesting or the state of being digested.

[1350-1400; ME digestioun < AF, MF < L digestion- (s. of digestio), equiv. to digest(us) (see DIGEST) + -ion- -ION]

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Process of dissolving and chemically converting food for absorption by cells.

In the mouth, food is chewed, mixed with saliva, which begins to break down starches, and kneaded by the tongue into a ball for swallowing. Peristalsis propels it through the esophagus and the rest of the alimentary canal. In the stomach, food mixes with acid and enzymes, which further break it down. The mixture, called chyme, enters the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. Bile from the liver breaks up fat globules. Enzymes from the pancreas and intestinal glands act on specific molecules, breaking carbohydrates down into simple sugars, proteins into amino acids, and fats into glycerol and fatty acids. These products are absorbed by the bloodstream. Indigestible substances, such as fibre, pass into the large intestine, where water and ions are reabsorbed and feces held for excretion.

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▪ biology

Introduction

      sequence by which food is broken down and chemically converted so that it can be absorbed by the cells of an organism and used to maintain vital bodily functions. This article summarizes the chemical actions of the digestive process. For details on the anatomy and physiology for specific digestive systems, see digestive system, human, and digestive system, invertebrate.

      In order to sustain themselves, all organisms must obtain nutrients (nutrient) from the environment. Some nutrients serve as raw materials for the synthesis of cellular material; others (e.g., many vitamins) act as regulators of chemical reactions; and still others, upon oxidation, yield energy. Not all nutrients, however, are in a form suitable for immediate use by an organism; some must undergo physical and chemical changes before they can serve as energy or cell substance.

      Through the act of eating, or ingestion, nutrients are taken from the environment. Many nutrient molecules are so large and complex that they must be split into smaller molecules before they can be used by the organism. This process of breaking down food into molecular particles of usable size and content is called digestion. Unusable components are expelled from the organism by a process called egestion, or excretion. Some plants, many microorganisms, and all animals perform these three functions—ingestion, digestion, and egestion (often grouped under the term alimentation)—but, as expected, the details differ considerably from group to group.

      The problems associated with nutrient intake and processing differ greatly depending on whether the organism is autotrophic or heterotrophic. Autotrophic organisms can manufacture the large energy-rich organic compounds necessary for life from simple inorganic raw materials; consequently, they require only simple nutrients from the environment. By contrast, heterotrophic organisms cannot manufacture complex organic compounds from simple inorganic ones, and so they must obtain preformed organic molecules directly from the environment.

      Green plants constitute by far the majority of the Earth's autotrophic organisms. During the process of photosynthesis, plants use light energy to synthesize organic materials from carbon dioxide and water. Both compounds can be absorbed easily across the membranes of cells—in a typical land plant, carbon dioxide is absorbed from the air by leaf cells, and water is absorbed from the soil by root cells—and used directly in photosynthesis; i.e., neither of them requires digestion. The only other nutrients needed by most green plants are minerals such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which also can be absorbed directly and require no digestion. There are, however, a few green plants (such as sundew, Venus's-flytrap, and pitcher plant) that supplement their inorganic diet with organic compounds (particularly protein) obtained by trapping and digesting insects and other small animals.

      Heterotrophy characterizes all animals, most microorganisms, and plants and plantlike organisms (e.g., fungi) that lack the pigment chlorophyll, which is necessary for photosynthesis. These organisms must ingest organic nutrients—carbohydrates, proteins, and fats—and, by digestion, rearrange them into a form suitable for their own particular needs.

Ingestion

      As already explained, the nutrients obtained by most green plants are small inorganic molecules that can move with relative ease across cell membranes. Heterotrophic organisms such as bacteria and fungi (fungus), which require organic nutrients yet lack adaptations for ingesting bulk food, also rely on direct absorption of small nutrient molecules. Molecules of carbohydrates (carbohydrate), proteins (protein), or lipids (lipid), however, are too large and complex to move easily across cell membranes. Bacteria and fungi circumvent this by secreting digestive enzymes onto the food material; these enzymes catalyze the splitting of the large molecules into smaller units that are then absorbed into the cells. In other words, the bacteria and fungi perform extracellular digestion—digestion outside cells—before ingesting the food. This is often referred to as osmotrophic nutrition.

 Like bacteria, protozoans (protozoan) are unicellular organisms, but their method of feeding is quite different. They ingest relatively large particles of food and carry out intracellular digestion (digestion inside cells) through a method of feeding called phagotrophic nutrition. Many protozoans also are osmotrophic to a lesser degree. Some organisms, such as amoebas (amoeba), have pseudopodia (“false feet”) that flow around the food particle until it is completely enclosed in a membrane-bounded chamber called a food vacuole; this process is called phagocytosis. Other protozoans, such as paramecia (Paramecium), pinch off food vacuoles from the end of a prominent oral groove into which food particles are drawn by the beating of numerous small hairlike projections called cilia. In still other cases of phagotrophic nutrition, tiny particles of food adhere to the membranous surface of the cell, which then folds inward and is pinched off as a vacuole; this process is called pinocytosis. The food particles contained in vacuoles formed through phagocytosis or pinocytosis have not entered the cell in the fullest sense until they have been digested into molecules able to cross the membrane of the vacuole and become incorporated into the cellular substance. This is accomplished by enzyme-containing organelles called lysosomes (lysosome), which fuse with the vacuoles and convert food into simpler compounds (see figure—>).

      Most multicellular animals possess some sort of digestive cavity—a chamber opening to the exterior via a mouth—in which digestion takes place. The higher animals, including the vertebrates, have more elaborate digestive tracts, or alimentary canals (alimentary canal), through which food passes. In all of these systems large particles of food are broken down to units of more manageable size within the cavity before being taken into cells and reassembled (or assimilated) as cellular substance.

Digestion

      The enzymatic (enzyme) splitting of large and complex molecules into smaller ones is effective only if the enzyme molecules come into direct contact with the molecules of the material they are to digest. In animals that ingest very large pieces of food, only the molecules at the surface are exposed to the digestive enzymes. Digestion can proceed more efficiently, therefore, if the bulk food is first mechanically broken down, exposing more molecules for digestion. Among the variety of devices that have evolved to perform such mechanical processing of food are the teeth of mammals and the muscular gizzards of birds. Human digestion begins in the mouth. There food is chewed and mixed with saliva, which adds moisture and contains the enzyme amylase, which begins to break down starches. The tongue kneads food into a smooth ball ( bolus), which is then swallowed. The bolus passes through the pharynx and esophagus into the stomach, propelled by peristaltic muscular contractions. In the stomach the food is then mixed by peristaltic contractions (about three per minute) with highly acidic gastric juices secreted there. The hormone gastrin stimulates the secretion of these juices, which contain water, inorganic salts, hydrochloric acid, mucin, and several enzymes. The food, now in a semiliquid state called chyme, passes from the stomach into the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine, where the greatest part of digestion takes place.

      The chemical reactions involved in digestion can be clarified by an account of the digestion of maltose sugar. Maltose is, technically, a double sugar, since it is composed of two molecules of the simple sugar glucose bonded together. The digestive enzyme maltase catalyzes a reaction in which a molecule of water is inserted at the point at which the two glucose units are linked, thereby disconnecting them, as illustrated below.

      In chemical terms, the maltose has been hydrolyzed. All digestive enzymes act in a similar way and thus are hydrolyzing enzymes.

      Many other nutrient molecules are much more complex, being polymers, or long chains of simple component units. starch, for example, is a carbohydrate, like maltose, but its molecules are composed of thousands of glucose units bonded together. Even so, the digestion of starch is essentially the same as the digestion of maltose: each linkage between adjacent glucose units is hydrolyzed, with the result that the starch molecule is split into thousands of glucose molecules. protein molecules also are polymers, but their constituent units are amino acids (amino acid) instead of simple sugars. Proteolytic (proteolytic enzyme) (i.e., protein-digesting) enzymes split the protein chains by hydrolyzing the bonds between adjacent amino acids. Because as many as 20 different kinds of amino acids may act as building blocks for proteins, the complete digestion of a protein into its amino acids requires the action of several different proteolytic enzymes, each capable of hydrolyzing the bonds between particular pairs of amino acids. fat molecules too are composed of smaller building-block units (the alcohol glycerol plus three fatty acid groups); they are hydrolyzed by the enzyme lipase.

      Various other classes of compounds are digested by hydrolytic enzymes specific for them. Not all of these enzymes occur in every organism; for example, few animals possess cellulase (cellulose-digesting enzyme), despite the fact that cellulose constitutes much of the total bulk of the food ingested by plant-eating animals. Some nonetheless benefit from the cellulose in their diet because their digestive tracts contain microorganisms (known as symbionts) capable of digesting cellulose. The herbivores absorb some of the products of their symbionts' digestive activity.

      So far, emphasis has been placed on the role of digestion in converting large complex molecules into smaller simpler ones that can move across membranes, which thus permits absorption of food into cells. The same processes occur when substances must be moved from cell to cell within a multicellular organism. Thus, green plants, which do not have to digest incoming nutrients, digest stored material, such as starch, before it can be transported from storage organs (tubers, bulbs, corms) to points of utilization, such as growing buds.

Egestion

      Animals that ingest bulk food unavoidably take in some matter that they are incapable of using. In the case of unicellular organisms that form food vacuoles, the vacuoles eventually fuse with the cell membrane and then rupture, releasing indigestible wastes to the outside. Substances that cannot be digested, such as cellulose, pass into the colon, or large intestine. There water and ions such as sodium and chloride are reabsorbed, and the remaining solid material is held until it is expelled through the anus.

      Fecal (feces) constituents in species with an alimentary canal also include cast-off effete (damaged or worn-out) cells from the living mucous membrane and, in higher animals, bacteria that exist in the intestine in a symbiotic relationship. In the higher animals, the life span of a cell from the mucosal epithelium is four to eight days, and the life span of the specialized cells, such as the acid-secreting parietal cells located in the stomach, is one to three years.

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