What are the steps of aerobic respiration?
Feb.11, 2010 in
Aerobic Respiration
What are the steps of aerobic respiration?…and go through and describe each process. How much ATP is produced in each process?
this is my bio midterm question. can you make it simple so i know what it mean. THANK YOU!!
February 11th, 2010 at 7:36 am
Aerobic respiration requires oxygen in order to generate energy (ATP). Although carbohydrates, fats, and proteins can all be processed and consumed as reactant, it is the preferred method of pyruvate breakdown from glycolysis and requires that pyruvate enter the mitochondrion in order to be fully oxidized by the Krebs cycle. The product of this process is energy in the form of ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), by substrate-level phosphorylation, NADH and FADH2.
Simplified reaction: C6H12O6 (aq) + 6 O2 (g) → 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l)
ΔG = -2880 kJ per mole of C6H12O6
The negative ΔG indicates that the products of the chemical process store less energy than the reactants and the reaction can happen spontaneously; In other words, without an input of energy.
The reducing potential of NADH and FADH2 is converted to more ATP through an electron transport chain with oxygen as the “terminal electron acceptor”. Most of the ATP produced by aerobic cellular respiration is made by oxidative phosphorylation. This works by the energy released in the consumption of pyruvate being used to create a chemiosmotic potential by pumping protons across a membrane. This potential is then used to drive ATP synthase and produce ATP from ADP. Biology textbooks often state that 38 ATP molecules can be made per oxidised glucose molecule during cellular respiration (2 from glycolysis, 2 from the Krebs cycle, and about 34 from the electron transport system).[2] However, this maximum yield is never quite reached due to losses (leaky membranes) as well as the cost of moving pyruvate and ADP into the mitochondrial matrix and current estimates range around 29 to 30 ATP per glucose