Why do you need to breathe?

Of course if you didn't breathe, you couldn't survive. Why do you need air to live? You need the gas oxygen to perform cellular
respiration to get energy from your food.

The Process of Cellular Respiration

Cellular respiration is the process of extracting energy in the form of ATP from the glucose in the food you eat. How does cellular
respiration happen inside of the cell? Cellular respiration is a three step process. Briefly:
1. In stage one, glucose is broken down in the cytoplasm of the cell in a process called glycolysis.
2. In stage two, the pyruvate molecules are transported into the mitochondria. The mitochondria are the organelles known as the
energy "powerhouses" of the cells. In the mitochondria, the pyruvate, which have been converted into a 2-carbon molecule,
enter the Krebs cycle. Notice that mitochondria have an inner membrane with many folds, called cristae. These cristae greatly
increase the membrane surface area where many of the cellular respiration reactions take place.
3. In stage three, the energy in the energy carriers enters an electron transport chain. During this step, this energy is used to
produce ATP.
Oxygen is needed to help the process of turning glucose into ATP. The initial step releases just two molecules of ATP for each glucose.
The later steps release much more ATP.

Most of the reactions of cellular respiration are carried out in the mitochondria.

The Reactants
What goes into the cell? Oxygen and glucose are both reactants of cellular respiration. Oxygen enters the body when an organism
breathes. Glucose enters the body when an organism eats.

The Products
What does the cell produce? The products of cellular respiration are carbon dioxide and water. Carbon dioxide is transported from your
mitochondria out of your cell, to your red blood cells, and back to your lungs to be exhaled. ATP is generated in the process. When one
molecule of glucose is broken down, it can be converted to a net total of 36 or 38 molecules of ATP. This only occurs in the presence
of oxygen.

The Chemical Reaction

The overall chemical reaction for cellular respiration is one molecule of glucose (C 6H12O6) and six molecules of oxygen (O2) yields six
molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) and six molecules of water (H2O). Using chemical symbols the equation is represented as follows:
C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O
ATP is generated during the process. Though this equation may not seem that complicated, cellular respiration is a series of chemical
reactions divided into three stages: glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain.

Glycolysis
Stage one of cellular respiration is glycolysis. Glycolysis is the splitting, or lysis of glucose. Glycolysis converts the 6-carbon glucose
into two 3-carbon pyruvate molecules. This process occurs in the cytoplasm of the cell, and it occurs in the presence or absence of
oxygen. During glycolysis a small amount of NADH is made as are four ATP. Two ATP are used during this process, leaving a net gain
of two ATP from glycolysis. The NADH temporarily holds energy, which will be used in stage three.

The Krebs Cycle

In the presence of oxygen, under aerobic conditions, pyruvate enters the mitochondria to proceed into the Krebs cycle. The second stage
of cellular respiration is the transfer of the energy in pyruvate, which is the energy initially in glucose, into two energy carriers, NADH
and FADH2. A small amount of ATP is also made during this process. This process occurs in a continuous cycle, named after its discover,
Hans Krebs. The Krebs cycle uses a 2-carbon molecule (acetyl-CoA) derived from pyruvate and produces carbon dioxide.

The Electron Transport Chain

Stage three of cellular respiration is the use of NADH and FADH 2 to generate ATP. This occurs in two parts. First, the NADH and
FADH2 enter an electron transport chain, where their energy is used to pump, by active transport, protons (H+) into the intermembrane
space of mitochondria. This establishes a proton gradient across the inner membrane. These protons then flow down their concentration
gradient, moving back into the matrix by facilitated diffusion. During this process, ATP is made by adding inorganic phosphate to
ADP. Most of the ATP produced during cellular respiration is made during this stage.
For each glucose that starts cellular respiration, in the presence of oxygen (aerobic conditions), 36-38 ATP are generated. Without
oxygen, under anaerobic conditions, much less (only two!) ATP are produced.
Summary
 Most of the steps of cellular respiration take place in the mitochondria.
 Oxygen and glucose are both reactants in the process of cellular respiration.
 The main product of cellular respiration is ATP; waste products include carbon dioxide and water.