The Ultimate Recycler
ADP, ATP, ATP synthase, biochemistry, body weight, cell membrane, cell's, cities, citrate, cytoplasm, electron transport chain, Energy, Genome Biology, glucose, hydroelectric plant, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, machines, metabolism, mitochondria, NADH, protein complexes, pyruvate, recycling, succinate
When a city starts out with a major energy deficit, there are two changes that should be made: to be really, and I mean really efficient at recycling the critical resource, or to buy more energy. What about in biology? Cells are like cities, right? Out of Balance We already know from a previous post (“The Mystery of Energy Metabolism”) that the cell has an energy budget that is out of balance based solely on biosynthesis and use of ATP. It is in a predicament. It has an extreme shortfall in ATP in its balance sheet, needing six ATP just to make one. ATP is a high energy molecule. All that energy has to be loaded into the molecule during its synthesis by using up other ATP molecules. If chemical A is…