In: Biology
The degradation of proteins in our body is important as it provides the supply of amino acids, regulates protein level and remove damaged protein from our body. The two main pathways through which proteins are degraded in our body include Lysosomal pathway and proteosomal pathway.
Lysosomal pathway involves lysosomes which contain digestive enzymes to digest large molecules. They cleave proteins into individual amino acids. The membrane of lysosome invaginates and forms vesicles full of cytosolic proteins and are degraded into amino acids.
One more mechanism involves Autophagy in which cytoplasmic proteins are degraded due to enclosure in vesicles which fuse with lysosomes.
Proteosomal pathway involves proteosome ( cylindrical protein complex in cytosol). It cleaves proteins tagged with Ubiquitin ( a regulatory protein) which acts as molecular tag and marks them for degradation. Here proteins are not broken into individual amino acids but are cleaved into small peptides (7-9 amino acids). ThyT later broken into individual amino acids by cytosolic proteases.