Measuring Cellular Respiration And Fermentation

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Measuring Cellular Respiration and Fermentation

Jaclyn Napoli
November 20, 2014
Cellular Processes Lab
BSC 2010L.905
Lab Partner: Jessi Grillo

Introduction Cellular respiration is the series of metabolic process by which living cells produce energy through the oxidation of organic substances. Cellular respiration takes place in the mitochondria. Fermentation is the process by which complex organic compounds such as glucose, are broken down by the action of enzymes into simpler compounds without the use of oxygen. The significance of these pathways for organisms is to allow for an organism to be able to generate ATP. Some organism that undergo cellular respiration are bacteria and fungi. Some organism that undergo fermentation are yeast and muscle cells. In cellular respiration, glucose is oxidized and releases energy. In cellular respiration, glucose produces ATP and 3-carbon molecules of pyruvate. The pyruvate is then further broken down in the mitochondria where it becomes oxidized and releases CO2 (Upadhyaya 2014). In the fermentation process oxygen does not play a part. This process converts glucose into pyruvate and produces ATP. From there pyruvate breaks down into CO2 and acetaldehyde (Upadhyaya 2014) Monosaccharides are known as simple sugars and their main function is being the source of energy for organisms. Disaccharides are two monosaccharides joined by a covalent bond and their primary function is to provide food to monosaccharides. Some disaccharides
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