8: Microbial Metabolism (Part C)
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- 8.1: Biogeochemical Cycles
- Energy flows directionally through ecosystems, entering as sunlight for phototrophs or as inorganic molecules for chemoautotrophs. The six most common elements associated with organic molecules—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—take a variety of chemical forms and may exist for long periods in the atmosphere, on land, in water, or beneath earth’s surface
Thumbnail: The Krebs cycle, also known as the citric acid cycle, is summarized here. Note incoming two-carbon acetyl results in the main outputs per turn of two CO 2 , three NADH, one FADH 2 , and one ATP (or GTP) molecules made by substrate-level phosphorylation. Two turns of the Krebs cycle are required to process all of the carbon from one glucose molecule.