Respiration introduction

• 1

  • All living things require constant supply of energy in order to survive.
  • energy is used to drive many of the cells metabolic processes such as building amino acids or making DNA copies
  • This energy comes from the sun and captured in chemical form by autotrophic organisms during photosynthesis
• 2

  • while the carbohydrates, fats and proteins produced are useful for storage and other purposes, they cannot be directly used by cells to provide energy.
  • conversion of these chemicals into forms like ATP occurs during respiration
• 3

  • there are 2 types of respiration. aerobic takes place in presence of oxygen and anaerobic takes place without oxygen. All respiration takes place in the mitochondria
  • whatever forms the food an organism usually takes, its converted to carbohydrate usually the hexose sugar glucose, before being respired
  • most respiration is the oxidation of this glucose to carbon dioxide and water with the release of energy
• • ATP is a phosphorylated nucleotide
  • it is similar in structure to nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA
• • when one phosphate group is removed, the energy in the bond is released
  • This hydrolysis reaction is controlled by ATPase enzyme
  • products are ADP and a phosphate group
• ATP +$H_2O$ $\rightarrow$ ADP + Pi