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Inborn errors of metabolism are often referred to as congenital metabolic diseases or inherited metabolic disorders. [2] Another term used to describe these disorders is "enzymopathies". This term was created following the study of biodynamic enzymology , a science based on the study of the enzymes and their products.
A freshwater aquatic food web. The blue arrows show a complete food chain (algae → daphnia → gizzard shad → largemouth bass → great blue heron). A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community.
This is contrasted with external digestion, meaning that, rather than swallowing food and then digesting it using enzymes located within a GI tract, an organism instead releases enzymes directly onto the food source. [3] After allowing the enzymes time to digest the material, the decomposer then absorbs the nutrients from the environment into ...
Microorganisms have key roles in carbon and nutrient cycling, animal (including human) and plant health, agriculture and the global food web. Microorganisms live in all environments on Earth that are occupied by macroscopic organisms, and they are the sole life forms in other environments, such as the deep subsurface and ‘extreme’ environments.
The malfunction of just one type of enzyme out of the thousands of types present in the human body can be fatal. An example of a fatal genetic disease due to enzyme insufficiency is Tay–Sachs disease, in which patients lack the enzyme hexosaminidase. [101] [102] One example of enzyme deficiency is the most common type of phenylketonuria.
Saprobionts are organisms that digest their food externally and then absorb the products. [1] [2] This process is called saprotrophic nutrition. Fungi are examples of saprobiontic organisms, which are a type of decomposer. [citation needed] Saprobiontic organisms feed off dead and/or decaying biological materials.
In the human body, disaccharidases are made mostly in an area of the small intestine's wall called the brush border, making them members of the group of "brush border enzymes". A genetic defect in one of these enzymes will cause a disaccharide intolerance, such as lactose intolerance or sucrose intolerance .
The terms detritivore and decomposer are often used interchangeably, but they describe different organisms. Detritivores are usually arthropods and help in the process of remineralization. Detritivores perform the first stage of remineralization, by fragmenting the dead plant matter, allowing decomposers to perform the second stage of ...