A spoonful of sugar may make the medicine go down, but understanding what happens to that sugar in the cell is far more complicated than simple digestion, according to researchers. For sugars to metabolize and provide energy to the cells, a series of enzymes – biological catalysts—must each, in turn, break down a reactant. In this case, the researchers used glucose, the sugar found in corn syrup and one of the two sugars that result when table sugar—sucrose—is broken down in the body.