Page 98 - The Miraculous Machine that Works for an Entire Lifetime: Enzyme

Harun Yahya

the hormone gastrin. The presence of food in the stomach, the secretion

of gastrin, the production of hydrochloric acid and the conversion of
pepsinogen into pepsin are all interconnected. Therefore, the entry of
food into the stomach initiates a chain of highly complex stages.
Pepsin converts large protein molecules into small polypeptides,
but each polypeptide molecule contains a large number of intercon-
nected amino acids. The breaking down of these continues in the small
intestine. 61
There is a gate where the stomach opens into the intestine, whose
presence is of great importance, because if the stomach were not sepa-
rated from the intestine, it would entail the possibility of foods in the
intestine being returned to the stomach, which would have a damaging
impact on the stomach's own acidic environment. Enzymes in the in-

testine operate in a more neutral and alkaline environment, and these
special enzymes would be impaired by the stomach's acidity and give
rise to dangerous consequences. 62
Digestive enzymes have similar structures and functions, yet
those that function in the intestine cannot adapt to the gastric environ-
ment, nor vice versa. This shows that every region, every tissue and
every organ in the body is created with different properties; and that
enzymes have also been equipped with features appropriate to the con-
ditions in these separate environments.

h
t

s
e
m
n
i

s
e
t
n
i

e
I
t
n
c
i
a
S Special Enzymes in the Intestine e
p
e
n
z
y
l

E
The intestine has been specially created for the breaking down of
foodstuffs. The chemical events that take place in the walls—and the
flawless system involved in breaking foodstuffs down into their small-
est components and their subsequent distribution—are truly amazing.
Just about every square millimeter of the intestinal wall produces
countless enzymes that separate proteins into different peptides and
break these down into amino acids, carbohydrates into glucose and fats
into fatty acids and glycerol. These enzymes are of very different kinds,
96