Trying to explain cellular respiration is the 1000 most commonly used words.

[Guest]

Yes, I'm jumping on the band wagon.  Here it is:

Quote

To get the stuff that makes you able to do stuff, your cells need to do a thing called cell breathing. First, food is broken into little pieces. These little pieces then go to a thing which makes things to carry pieces smaller than the little things that make up everything else. These things are put onto a thing which moves little things that make up everything from less stuff to more stuff. This stuff goes through a thing which moves around to add a thing to another thing to make a thing which has stuff that makes you able to do stuff. The pieces smaller than the little things that make up everything else are put onto an air thing which grabs onto another thing that makes up everything to make water.

That is basically taking this, and turning it into that.

It's REALLY hard to turn such a complicated process into something with only those words, especially when you can't even mention the word atom, or molecule.  Then trying to explain ATP synthase, it's almost impossible.  (You can't even say that it spins.)  If you said what it above on an exam, you'd fail it.  If I tried to get into fermentation, I'd have to say that it produces the stuff that makes you drunk.  (I just ran that through, and produces isn't allowed.)  I can basically confirm that, yes, explaining cellular processes barely uses any common words.

[legoclone09]

Thing explainer says 'Thing' a lot.

 

well, it is called THING explainer.

[Hcube]

But why would you ever want to explain respiration with those words only ?

EDIT : the link you're giving is kinda weird...

It says that the Krebs Cycle itself produces 4 ATP ? I'm pretty sure it's 1ATP.

Edited December 31, 2015 by Hcube
Damn you autocorrect

[kerbiloid]

Just put your hand on opponent's nose and mouth and when he's eyeballs out, take it away and explain:
"Got it? With cells — all is the same."

[Hcube]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Just put your hand on opponent's nose and mouth and when he's eyeballs out, take it away and explain:
"Got it? With cells — all is the same."

Well he's mostly made of cells himself so in the end you wouldn't prove anything

[Guest]

On December 31, 2015 at 1:50 AM, Hcube said:

But why would you ever want to explain respiration with those words only ?

EDIT : the link you're giving is kinda weird...

It says that the Krebs Cycle itself produces 4 ATP ? I'm pretty sure it's 1ATP.

I'm pretty sure it varies.  One of the two is out of date, I know that.  I did a quick search and it says that the net gain is 2ATP.  In my bio class, we've been told that no-one is completely sure about the exact amount produced.  That's at least true for the ETC, as far as I can remember.  We did this a while ago, so I can't completely remember.

[Hcube]

3 hours ago, CliftonM said:

I'm pretty sure it varies.  One of the two is out of date, I know that.  I did a quick search and it says that the net gain is 2ATP.  In my bio class, we've been told that no-one is completely sure about the exact amount produced.  That's at least true for the ETC, as far as I can remember.  We did this a while ago, so I can't completely remember.

I'm pretty sure that the Krebs cycle is very well known, and that the net gain is 1GTP that is immediately transformed in GDP+P while producing 1ATP from 1ADP+P by the diphosphonucleotide kinase.

That is if you only consider Acetyl-coA. If you consider two acetyl-coA obtained from 1glucose, then yes it's two.

 

I'm not sure, what do you mean by ETC ?

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Hcube said:

I'm pretty sure that the Krebs cycle is very well known, and that the net gain is 1GTP that is immediately transformed in GDP+P while producing 1ATP from 1ADP+P by the diphosphonucleotide kinase.

That is if you only consider Acetyl-coA. If you consider two acetyl-coA obtained from 1glucose, then yes it's two.

 

I'm not sure, what do you mean by ETC ?

ETC- Electron Transport Chain.  I think you're right.

[Hcube]

18 minutes ago, CliftonM said:

ETC- Electron Transport Chain.  I think you're right.

Oh okay, thanks ! (Didn't learn about it in english, ECT is CRM in my place ^^)

 

Well the amount produced by the ECT isn't a discrete number of ATP per NADH or per FADH2, we usually say that NADH->3ATP and FADH2->2ATP, but these values are calculated by dividing the free enthalpy of the ECT complexes by 7,3kcal/mol (ATP).

The results are numbers with a lot of decimals, but they're close to 2 and 3 ATP

Could that be the reason why you heard that no one really knows how much it produces ?   (It's entirely possible that i forgot something)

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Hcube said:

Oh okay, thanks ! (Didn't learn about it in english, ECT is CRM in my place ^^)

 

Well the amount produced by the ECT isn't a discrete number of ATP per NADH or per FADH2, we usually say that NADH->3ATP and FADH2->2ATP, but these values are calculated by dividing the free enthalpy of the ECT complexes by 7,3kcal/mol (ATP).

The results are numbers with a lot of decimals, but they're close to 2 and 3 ATP

Could that be the reason why you heard that no one really knows how much it produces ?   (It's entirely possible that i forgot something)

That's exactly why.  Cellular respiration is REALLY complex, though it is doing something that would normally seem simple.  Some of the reason that the numbers vary depending on the source is date, and whether they're factoring in the amount used to get the reactants into the mitochondria, and the ones used to break down the glucose, etc.  

[Hcube]

18 minutes ago, CliftonM said:

That's exactly why.  Cellular respiration is REALLY complex, though it is doing something that would normally seem simple.  Some of the reason that the numbers vary depending on the source is date, and whether they're factoring in the amount used to get the reactants into the mitochondria, and the ones used to break down the glucose, etc.  

Yeah it can actually change a lot since the Krebs cycle itself and the ETC can consume ATP themselves, at some point you have to fix a few parameters ^^