Cellular Respiration

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1 Cellular Respiration
2 What exactly is Cellular Respiration?
3 Aerobic Respiration
4 Glycolysis
5 Anaerobic Respiration
6 Key Terms

Cellular Respiration

When you get tired, you usually eat food, right? Well it's not exactly that easy. Food must first pass through your digestive system before it can provide you with sufficient energy to perform your everyday tasks. The molecules from the food you eat then moves to your bloodstream, where the molecules' energy is free. This is what cellular respiration is all about. Cellular respiration also gets biochemical energy from fuel products, and as the name suggests, this process takes place inside of a cell.

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What exactly is Cellular Respiration?

Respiration is the process that takes types of sugar (glucose), which is formed from food molecules, and turns it into energy. The energy is then released into the bloodstream to power up the cell. Every organism in the universe that has cells relies on cellular respiration to go on. The process of releasing this energy is called oxidation. This can also happen with amino acids, and fatty acids. Cellular respiration can also occur through photosynthesis, where sunlight is converted in to energy. Respiration reactions can also occur through the releasing of excess materials, or waste. Released energy that is used to synthesize molecules is what "stores" the energy. Adenosine Triphosophate, also known as ATP, is the most widely known compound in cells.

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Aerobic Respiration

Aerobic respiration is the type of cellular respiration in which oxygen is required to produce energy.

Energy in these kinds of functions can also be called ATP. ATP stands for Adenosine Triphosophate. This is the usual way that pyurvates are broken down (for more information on pyruvates look up glycolysis or scroll down).Inside Aerobic organisms, the pyruvates go through the mitochondria, which then oxidizes it, to carbon dioxide and oxygen by pyurvate decarboxylate, or oxidative decarboxylation. Aerobic respiration is 19 times more efficient that anaerobic respiration. Almost all of the ATP produced in cellular respiration is because of oxidative phosphorylation. By pumping protons, the energy released in the engulfment pryuvate is used to make a chemiosmotic potential.

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Glycolysis

Glycolysis is a path that is found in the cytoplasm of most cells, and it does not require oxygen.

This function converts two particles of glucose and turns it into one part of pyruvate, which is then made into ATP energy. Glycolysis can also function in the chloroplasts of plant cells, where it works in the Calvin-Benson cycle. There are also more than one path of glycolysis. For example, the Embden-Meyerhof path, which is also the most well-known pathway. As the name suggests, Gustav Embden and Otto Meyerhof are the ones to in general, to discover this. Inside of prokaryote cells and eukaryote cells, glycolysis is the energy source. Glycolysis has three jobs: producing ATP (Adenosine Triphosophate), the production of pryuvates for the citric acid cycle, and the production of intermediate compounds.

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Anaerobic Respiration

Anaerobic, as the name suggests, is related to Aerobic respiration, but they are opposites.

Anaerobic respiration refers to the production of energy from oxidation without oxygen. Due to its lack of oxygen, Anaerobic respiration requires another electron acceptor. Anaerobic respiration can also be replaced with fermentation, when the glycolytic pathway is producing things inside of the cell. Oxygen is not present in Anaerobic respiration, but in some organisms called obligate anaerobes, oxygen can be very dangerous. This is caused by the extreme toxic levels of the molecules inside them, such as superoxide ion, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl ion. Also, there are organisms called facultative organisms that can live with oxygen or without. This is because they contain enzymes like superoxide dismutase and catalase.

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