B1.3.2 - Aerobic Respiration Flashcards
What is respiration?
Your body continually transfers energy so you can move, grow, keep warm and just be alive.
Respiration is a chemical process that occurs in every cell of an organism.
Respiration releases energy from glucose in the form ATP.
Exothermic reaction, energy transferred to surroundings by heating.
Aerobic respiration
Your energy comes from chemical stores in the food you eat - to transfer this energy, glucose reacts with oxygen in a a series of chemical reactions called aerobic respiration.
To get the oxygen needed, you breathe in air. Blood carries the oxygen to your cells.
Glucose + oxygen -> carbon dioxide + water
C6H12O6 + 6O2 -> 6CO2 + 6H2O + energy (atp)
ATP transferred from glucose
Occurs all the time in plant and animal cells - this provides the organism with a constant supply of energy.
What happens to the energy?
ATP produced during respiration is used to
- Synthesise larger molecules from smaller ones to make new cell material.
- For movement - animals use ATP to contract muscle cells, enabling the organism to move.
- To stay warm - when an animals surroundings are colder than they are, they increase their rate of respiration. This transfers more energy by heating, so that they can keep their body at a constant temperature,
Where does respiration occur
Respiration takes place inside the mitochondria of a cell.
Most cells contain mitochondria, but different cells contain different numbers of them.
The number of mitochondria in a cell tells you how active the cell is - for example, muscle cells transfer lots of energy, so they contain large numbers of mitochondria.
