I’ve been trying to understand this particular cycle. I am studying physiology and currently haven’t been able to make sense of the complete cycle. I made sense of some parts, but if someone could help me make sense of the generalities so that I can later add the complexities and detail,I’d appreciate it enormously. Thanks.
(I’ve even read previous sooooo)
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Your body stores energy in a way that is easy to save, but not use.
It has multiple methods to convert stored energy into useful forms. Some of these methods you can do at any time (aerobic), while some depend on the first few methods and don’t work well on their own (anaerobic).
When you are using all these energy storage conversion methods, you’re able to use that energy for a strenuous activity. The feeling you get of working so hard and being completely wiped out is when you start using that energy faster than any of these methods can make more of it ready for you.
The more you work out, the more efficient all of this becomes and the longer you can go before getting wiped out.
It’s much easier if you see a diagram with the proteins in a mitochondrial membrane imo. It’s about moving protons across that membrane so it builds a charge, and then the protons flow down that gradient and we make ATP, which is the immediate energy for cells. Good luck, it’s probably the most important physiological process for eukaryotes, which makes it clear why mitochondria came to define eukaryotes
When glucose undergoes glycolysis it forms two pyruvate molecules. These lose a CO2 molecule each and react with a substance called coenzyme-A to form acetyl-CoA, the molecule that enters Kreb’s Cycle.
The acetyl part of the molecule reacts with oxaloacetate in the mitochondria to form citrate (which is why Kreb’s is also known as the Citric Acid Cycle) while the coenzyme A is removed to pick up more acetyl groups, and then the citrate undergoes a series of reactions that turn the other two carbons from the original pyruvate into carbon dioxide and then regenerating the oxaloacetate (hence it being cyclic: the product of the last reaction is the reactant in the first).
During this process, some ATP is made along with a couple of high energy molecules (NADH and FADH2) which drive chemiosmosis to produce the bulk of the ATP from cellular respiration.
A very broad view is that you’re sapping the energy away from your carbohydrate source step-wise, then taking the energy you get from that and converting it into energy that your cells can use
The “sapping away” part would be oxidizing your carbohydrate in steps with electron carriers (i.e. the Krebs cycle), which can then fuel up an energy pump that makes ATP (i.e. the electron transport chain)
You end up with CO2, which is the very oxidized form of your original carbohydrate (i.e. it has had the vast majority of its energy from its bonds taken from it), H2O, which is what all the electrons eventually culminate in at the end of the energy pump (at the end of the electron transport chain), and a lot of ATP
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