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Why is excess glucose, synthesized to glycogen, stored only in limited amounts, as compared with lipids/triglycerides that are stored in our body?

Why is mature glycogen arranged (polymerized) in 12 tiers polymer?

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Glycogen storage limitation is due to these additional facts also:

  1. Glycogen is a hydrophilic molecule. This means an increase in glycogen concentration will cause a proportionate increase cell weight due to water accumulation. As cells can contain only limited volume the amount of glycogen stores are limited. Lipids are hydrophobic hence can be accumulated without increasing the volume and weight of cell due to water accumulation.
  2. As a source of energy lipids are approximately 2.5 times more efficient than glucose.
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In this presentation from stanford.edu, it's stated that the number of granules is directly dependent on the number of glycogenin molecules available, and the size of the granule is directly dependent on the need for physical association b/t the glycogen synthase, and glycogenin.

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