ACTIVITY 2: PARTS OF THE CELL
You do not consume alcoholic beverages, but your friend does, and he consumes these drinks regularly and in large amounts. If we could examine your liver cells and compare with your friend, would we see a difference in smooth ER and peroxisomes?
We would always see and hear advertisements on televisions and radios telling us to drink responsibly since the consumption of too much alcohol can adversely affect our livers. Whenever we drink alcohol, our livers filter it and in this process, some liver cells tend to die. Although our livers have the ability to develop new cells, prolonged alcohol misuse reduces its ability to regenerate causing serious damage to our livers. This is only one of the effects of alcohol on our livers. Now, if my friend and I will examine our liver cells, there will be a difference in the smooth ER and peroxisomes. The purpose of the smooth endoplasmic reticulum and peroxisomes is to detoxify ethanol from drinking alcohol. Since my friend consumes alcoholic drinks regularly and in large amounts, there will be an increase in the amount of smooth ER and peroxisomes in my friend’s liver cells in order to accommodate the increased amount of ethanol from excessive drinking. However, it may put the endoplasmic reticulum under stress which may interfere with the normal physiological functions of the liver cells.