Wednesday, September 21, 2016

How Life Gets Living - Cellular Respiration

The purpose of cellular respiration is to turn food into usable energy for the cell.

Food is not a usable energy source for cells, they can't use it to fuel their processes. The purpose of cellular respiration is to turn glucose from food into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which is the form of energy cells use to fuel all processes.
It is called respiration because the cells use oxygen in the process and produce carbon dioxide (and water) as 'waste products':


Phases of cellular respiration

Cellular respiration can be divided into three processes:
  1. Glycolysis : breakdown of glucose, produces some ATP and frees some electrons.
  2. Krebs cycle : series of reactions to free electrons from glucose-derived molecules, also produces some ATP
  3. Electron transport chain : the electrons from previous steps are used to produce a lot of ATP.
Glycolysis takes place in the cytoplasm and the other two phases take place in the mitochondria.

NADH and FADH2 mentioned in the image are the molecules that carry electrons to the electron transport chain.

QuickFact : Do you know, it needs to burn 1666 gm of sugar to produce 1 litre of water during respiration. Yes,as we see in reaction, there is another source of water inside our body than conventional drinking of water.


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