Biology has always been one of my weakest points, and I can never remember what the heck goes on in glycolysis/Krebs cycle/ETC. Can someone dumb it down for me, or tell what I need to specifically know about these things on the Mcat. Thanks!
Glycolysis/Krebs Cycle/ ETC
- Thread starter mouiw
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I'm not going to detail everything or explain it all, because there's the search function and review books for that but my advice would be to understand what each is trying to accomplish and how they're related. In glycolysis you're breaking down glucose so that it can go into CAC, and reducing NAD+ to NADH while you're at it which will be used in the ETC later to create the proton gradient for oxidative phosphorylation with oxygen as the final electron acceptor. CAC you're making NADH and FADH2, not much ATP either at this point, you're getting things ready for ETC. ETC you use the NADH and FADH created earlier for a high yield of ATP. Oxidizing NADH back to NAD+ makes it available again for use in glycolysis and CAC. One caveat to remember is that in anaerobic conditions that you need to convert NADH back to NAD+ otherwise glycolysis cannot continue; this is the purpose of fermentation with a side product being either ethanol (fun times) or lactic acid (damn my legs hurt).
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I'm glad it did, I could go more in depth but I shouldn't give you all the answers 😉. Hopefully, that just puts you along in the right direction into how they're interrelated, and your studies can give you the details about how many ATP here or there is net gained.
