Glycogen in history

In the first half of the 19th century, most biologists believed that animal cells were incapable of synthesizing carbohydrates.

Glycogen is the only homopolysaccharides of important in human metabolism. Glycogen presence in liver was first detected in 1856 by Claude Bernard (French physiologist), who recognized the relationship between the glycogen of the liver and the sugar present in the blood.

Bernard’s discovery, described in Recherches sur une nouvelle fonction du foie (1853), that the liver stored a water-insoluble starchy substance (glycogen), which converted into sugar (glucose), broke down the barriers between animal and plant physiology.

It is now well accepted that glycogen is the major storage polysaccharide in animals and microorganisms. 

Subsequently other researcher proved that the common monosaccharides give rise to liver glycogen.

Studies on the breakdown and synthesis of glycogen are particularly associated with the work of Carl and Gerti Cori in the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1951, B. McArdle described a patient who developed pain and stiffness in muscle after moderate exercise. Since that time several hundred others have been found with the same defect.

Glycogen accumulates in muscle tissue in this disease, one of the several types of ‘glycogen storage disease’.
Glycogen in history