Energy and Respiration Flashcards
(133 cards)
Where do living organisms gain their continuous supply of energy from?
- Absorption of light energy
2. Chemical potential energy (energy stored in nutrient molecules)
What does photosynthesis do and supply living organisms with?
- Transfers light energy into chemical potential energy
- An energy supply and usable carbon compounds
What do all biological macromolecules uses (e.g. carbohydrates, lipids and proteins) contain?
- Carbon
- All living organisms therefore need a source of carbon
What are autotrophs?
- An organism that can trap an inorganic carbon source (carbon dioxide) using energy from light or from chemical
- Organisms that can use an inorganic carbon source in the from of carbon dioxide
What are heterotrophs?
- An organism needing. supply of organic molecules as its carbon source
- Organisms needing a ready-made organic supply of carbon
What is an organic molecule?
- A compound including carbon and hydrogen
- The term originally meant a molecule derived from an organism, but now includes all compounds of carbon and hydrogen even if they do not occur naturally
How can organic molecules be used?
- Serve as ‘building blocks’ for making other organic molecules that are essential to the organism
- They can represent chemical potential energy that can be released by breaking down the molecules in respiration
- This energy can then be used for all forms of work
What is the relationship between heterotrophs and autotrophs?
Heterotrophs depend on autotrophs for both materials and energy
What does work in a living organism include?
- The synthesis of complex substances from simpler ones (anabolic reactions), such as the synthesis of polysaccharides from monosaccharides, lipids from glycerol; and fatty acids, polypeptides from amino acids and nucleic acids from nucleotides
- The active transport of substances against a diffusion gradient such as the activity of the sodium-potassium pump
- Mechanical work such as muscle contraction and other cellular movements; for example the movement of cilia and flagella, amoeboid movements and the movement of vesicles through cytoplasm
- In a few organisms, bioluminescence and electrical discharge
How do mammals and birds maintain a constant body temperature?
- Mammals and birds use thermal energy (heat) that is released from metabolic reactions to maintaining a constant body temperature
- Mammals and birds are endotherms releasing enrich thermal energy within their bodies to moaning them above the temperature of their surrounding when necessary
- They also maintain a constant body temperature through negative feedback loops
What are ectotherms?
- Most animals are ectotherms
- The thermal energy that warms them comes from outside their bodies
How can living organisms do work?
-Energy requiring reactions must be linked to those that yield energy
-In the complete oxidation of glucose (C6H12O6) in aerobic conditions, a large quantity of energy is made available
(Respiration equation and 2870kJ)
How do reactions in order to do work take place?
- Reaction such as this take place in a series of small steps, each releasing a small quantity of the total available energy
- Multi-step reactions allow precise control via feedback mechanisms
- Moreover the cell could not usefully harness the total available energy if all of it were made available at one instant
Why is the complete oxidation of glucose to carbon diode and water no happen very easily?
Despite its very high energy yield, glucose is quite stable because of the activation energy that has to be added before any reaction takes place
How is the activation energy overcome?
- In living organisms the activation energy is overcome by lowering it using enzymes
- Also by raising the energy level of the glucose by phosphorylation
How is energy harnessed at each step in respiration?
- Theoretically the energy released from each step of respiration could be harnessed directly to some form of work in the cell
- However a much more flexible system occurs in which energy-welding reaction in all organisms are used to make in intermediary molecule ATP
How is ATP broken apart?
- When a phosphate group is removed from ATP, adenosine diphosphate (ADP) is formed and 30.5 kJmol-1 of energy is released
- Removal of a second phosphate produce adenosine monophosphate (AMP) and 30.5 kJmol-1 of energy is again released
- Removal of the last phosphate leaving adenosine resale only 14.2kJmol-1
What are all of these reactions with ATP?
reversible
Which reaction is most important for providing energy for the cell?
-It is the interconversion of ATP and ADP that is all-important in providing energy for the cell
ATP + H2O (reversible arrow) ADP + H3PO4 ±30.5kJ
What is the rate of interconversion of ATP and ADP?
- The rate of interconversion or turnover is enormous
- It is estimated that a resting human uses about 40kg of ATP in 24 hours, but at any one time contains only about 5g of ATP
- During strenuous exercise, ATP breakdown may be as much as 0.5kg per minute
Describe ATP
- The cell’s energy-yielding reactions are linked to ATP synthesis
- The ATP is then used by the cell in all forms of work
- ATP is the universal intermediary molecules between energy-yielding and energy-requiring reactions used in a cell, whatever the type of cell
- In other words, ATP is the ‘energy currency’ of the cell
How is ATP suitable for its role?
- The cell ‘trades’ in ATP weather than making use of a number of different intermediates
- Suitable for role as readily hydrolysed to related energy and it is small and water soluble
- This allows it to be easily transported around the cell
What are energy transfers?
inefficient
Why are energy transfers inefficient?
- Some energy is converted to thermal energy whenever energy is transferred
- At the different stages in a multi-step reaction such as respiration, the energy made available may not perfectly correspond with the energy needed to synthesis ATP
- Any excess energy is converted to thermal energy
- Many energy-requiring reaction in cells also used less very that that realised by hydrolyses of ATP and ADP and any extra energy will be realised as thermal energy