12: Cellular Respiration Introduction
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- Aug 11, 2024
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Like a generating plant, plants and animals also must take in energy from the environment and convert it into a form that their cells can use. Energy enters an organism’s body in one form and is converted into another form that can fuel the organism’s life functions. In the process of photosynthesis, plants and other photosynthetic producers take in energy in the form of light (solar energy) and convert it into chemical energy, glucose, which stores this energy in its chemical bonds. Then, a series of metabolic pathways, collectively called cellular respiration, extracts the energy from the bonds in glucose and converts it into a form that all living things can use—both producers, such as plants, and consumers, such as animals.
- 12.1: Introduction
- Energy enters an organism’s body in one form and is converted into another form that can fuel the organism’s life functions. A series of metabolic pathways, collectively called cellular respiration, extracts the energy from the bonds in glucose and converts it into a form that all living things can use—both producers, such as plants, and consumers, such as animals.
- 12.2: Energy in Living Systems
- Energy production within a cell involves many coordinated chemical pathways. Most of these pathways are combinations of oxidation and reduction reactions. Oxidation and reduction occur in tandem. An oxidation reaction strips an electron from an atom in a compound, and the addition of this electron to another compound is a reduction reaction. Because oxidation and reduction usually occur together, these pairs of reactions are called oxidation reduction reactions, or redox reactions.
Thumbnail: The generalized structure of a prokaryotic cell. (CC BY 4.0; OpenStax).
