Cellular Respiration - Question (Dec/22/2010 )
How many moles of ATP are produced from the complete oxidation of a mole of glucose in cellular respiration?
I'm pretty sure it's between 36-38. However, I don't understand this, why such a big number? Can someone explain this to me?
I know glycolysis has a net of 2 ATP, and then i think the Kreb's cycle produces 2 ATP. So I'm assuming the large number of ATP is mainly because of chemiosmosis in the Electron Transport Chain. How many ATP does it produce? And why does the ETC produce such a large amount of ATP in comparison to glycolysis and the Krebs?
Thanks so much!
lilyy on Thu Dec 23 00:21:08 2010 said:
How many moles of ATP are produced from the complete oxidation of a mole of glucose in cellular respiration?
I'm pretty sure it's between 36-38. However, I don't understand this, why such a big number? Can someone explain this to me?
I know glycolysis has a net of 2 ATP, and then i think the Kreb's cycle produces 2 ATP. So I'm assuming the large number of ATP is mainly because of chemiosmosis in the Electron Transport Chain. How many ATP does it produce? And why does the ETC produce such a large amount of ATP in comparison to glycolysis and the Krebs?
Thanks so much!
According to what i remember, it's 2 from glyclolysis, 2 from krebs, and 32 from the ETC....but why, not sure!
It's that way because nature is amazing and has found a way to extract pretty much the most possible energy from a molecule of glucose. If you think about it, once you've created a protein complex to shuttle electrons and have synthesized ATP Synthase...why not duplicate that gene and make the most complexes possible to create an electron transport chain. There is an obvious selective advantage to the maximal ETC compared to a minimal one that only produces, say, 8 ATP