Aerobic Respiration Process

An Aerobic Respiration Process is a cellular respiration process that requires oxygen in order to create adenosine triphosphate.

• Example(s):
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Anaerobic Respiration Process,
  • Fermentation,
  • Maintenance Respiration Process.
• See: Cell Membrane, Aerobic Metabolism, Oxygen, Catabolism, Combustion Reaction, Blood Oxygen Saturation, Respiratory Complex I, Microphysiometry, Pasteur Point, Respirometry.

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References

2020

• (Wikipedia, 2020) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration#Aerobic_respiration Retrieved:2020-5-12.
  • QUOTE: Aerobic respiration requires oxygen (O₂) in order to create ATP. Although carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are consumed as reactants, it is the preferred method of pyruvate breakdown in glycolysis and requires that pyruvate enter the mitochondria in order to be fully oxidized by the Krebs cycle. The products of this process are carbon dioxide and water, but the energy transferred is used to break bonds in ADP as the third phosphate group is added to form ATP (adenosine triphosphate), by substrate-level phosphorylation, NADH and FADH₂

Simplified reaction:	C6H12O6 (s) + 6 O2 (g) → 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l) + heat
	ΔG = −2880 kJ per mol of C6H12O6

The negative ΔG indicates that the reaction can occur spontaneously.

The potential of NADH and FADH₂ is converted to more ATP through an electron transport chain with oxygen and protons (hydrogen) as the "terminal electron acceptors". Most of the ATP produced by aerobic cellular respiration is made by oxidative phosphorylation. The energy of O₂ released is used to create a chemiosmotic potential by pumping protons across a membrane. This potential is then used to drive ATP synthase and produce ATP from ADP and a phosphate group. Biology textbooks often state that 38 ATP molecules can be made per oxidized glucose molecule during cellular respiration (2 from glycolysis, 2 from the Krebs cycle, and about 34 from the electron transport system). However, this maximum yield is never quite reached because of losses due to leaky membranes as well as the cost of moving pyruvate and ADP into the mitochondrial matrix, and current estimates range around 29 to 30 ATP per glucose.

Aerobic metabolism is up to 15 times more efficient than anaerobic metabolism (which yields 2 molecules ATP per 1 molecule glucose) because the double bond in O₂ is of higher energy than other double bonds or pairs of single bonds in other common molecules in the biosphere. However, some anaerobic organisms, such as methanogens are able to continue with anaerobic respiration, yielding more ATP by using other inorganic molecules (not oxygen) of high energy as final electron acceptors in the electron transport chain. They share the initial pathway of glycolysis but aerobic metabolism continues with the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. The post-glycolytic reactions take place in the mitochondria in eukaryotic cells, and in the cytoplasm in prokaryotic cells.

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