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Topic: Disappearing electrons in respiration  (Read 9064 times)

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Offline Babcock_Hall

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Re: Disappearing electrons in respiration
« Reply #15 on: January 23, 2017, 10:03:55 AM »
Babcock hall: I see two problems here- firstly as far as I can tell the NADs and FADs dont have a role in producing CO2 but I have not examined the mechanism in detail (if they do I'd love to know as this could be the solution). The other problem is that you only need 12e- to reduce 6O2 molecules at the end of the ETC. Have a look at the balanced equation:

6O2 + 12H+ + 12e- :rarrow: 6H2O

So what happens to the other 12 electrons.
NAD is produced in several reactions that are oxidative decarboxylations (pyruvate dehydrogenase, isocitrate dehydrogenase, and α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase).

Offline Yggdrasil

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Re: Disappearing electrons in respiration
« Reply #16 on: January 23, 2017, 11:43:10 PM »
Yggdrasil thank you for your reply.

At what point are these 6 water molecules used? I haven't spotted these on any reaction schemes I have seen (but admittedly, these are all generally massively simplified and don't show any mechanistic details). I'd love to know more.

You can see the need for water as glucose has one oxygen per carbon, but CO2 has two oxygens per carbon.  The oxygen atom in CO2 comes from water as molecular oxygen is used only in the electron transport chain to produce water.

Conceptually, you can think of glycolysis + citric acid cycle as:
C6H12O6 + 6H2O --> 6 CO2 + 12H- + 12H+

And the electron transport chain as:
12H- + 12H+ + 6O2 --> 12H2O

To give the overall equation:

C6H12O6 + 6O2 --> 6 CO2 + 6H2O

Not exactly sure which exact steps are the ones that take up water (some may use water indirectly), but the fumarase reaction requires water.

Offline ptryon

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Re: Disappearing electrons in respiration
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2017, 02:05:27 AM »
Ahhh I see! Isn't it interesting how it all comes together when you start to understand a chemical problem like this? Thank you to everyone who has answered. Yggdrasil, thank you. I couldn't find this anywhere I looked- but it makes perfect sense when you summarise it.

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