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Who Is Carla The Carbon Atom?

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Carla the Carbon atom is a free spirit. She wanders through the atmosphere, moving with the wind. Carla floats from one cloud to the next, without a care on her mind. One day, she was floating in the air, and was joined by two oxygen companions, Oscar and Octavius. Her two companions transformed her into a carbon dioxide molecule. Her new status as a molecule allowed her new privileges, like the ability to enter plants and to take part in plant and animal respiration. Carla was now a part of an exclusive club.
Carla was minding her business, chatting with her new best friends, Oscar and Octavius, and she suddenly found herself diffusing through the stomata of a maple tree (shocker- doors are open, must be day). Carla has entered the leaf …show more content…

After some drinks of ATP, the 3-Carbon molecules are energized (phosphorylated) and hit with some negative energy (reduced, gain electrons). Carla’s new group, the Carbonators, transform into a new group, the G3P molecule. As a G3P molecule, Carla can be turned into a carbohydrate, like glucose, sucrose, and more sugars. At the end of the party, Carla leaves the VIP room as a sucrose molecule.
Her sweetness, as a sucrose molecule, allows her to travel down the phloem to the basement, the roots. She passes through the sieve tube elements to then enter the phloem tissue. As a sucrose molecule, she diffuses from cell to another through the sieve tube elements, through secondary active transport. The cells shoot hydrogen ions out of the cell, and when they create a concentration gradient, the hydrogen ions come back downhill to reenter the cell. Carla and her new friends tag along, joining the conga line, to enter the cell alongside the hydrogens.
Sometime in the phloem, the sucrose transport is interrupted. A thump, thump noise and then a hole appears. A spigot has entered the phloem tissue and the sucrose pours into the spigot. Carla and her friends have no way to escape the spigot, and when it is filled, it is removed. Carla is face to face with a giant, a homo sapien, a mythical creature told in her bedtime stories. A human being, lover of sucrose, would turn Carla and her friends into a delicacy, maple syrup.
Carla is sentenced to torture, as she and her friends are

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