Charging The Cellular Batteries Flashcards
What is the ‘ATP battery’ charged with?
- Catabolism of organic carbon substrates
- photosynthesis
What does the ‘ATP battery’ discharge?
free energy coupled to thermodynamically unfavourable reactions for biosynthesis of cellular components
Why is ATP useful as an energy carrier?
Interconversion between ATP and ADP + Pi has an unusually high Keq
Keq
- Equilibrium constant
- concentration of products / concentration of reactants
How much ATP will there be at equilibrium?
Vanishingly small amounts
At what concentration is ATP maintained in a cell, relative to ADP
~3 fold greater
What are the typical concentration of ADP, ATP and Pi in a cell?
ADP = 1mM
ATP = 3mM
Pi = 10mM
How far is the ATP reaction displaced from equilibrium?
30,000 fold
Properties of ATP
- thermodynamically unstable
- kinetically stable
- middling relative Gibbs free energy release on phosphoester hydrolysis (compared to other phosphate compound)
Why is the middling free energy of ATP hydrolysis important?
Unfavourable reverse reaction (condensation of ADP and Pi to form ATP) can be found oven by coupling to other phosphate compound hydrolysis
What are the two mechanisms to charge the ATP battery
- Substrate-level phosphorylation
- Oxidative phosphorylation
Substrate-level phosphorylation
- metabolic reaction for ATP formation by direct transfer of PO3 to ADP, from another phosphorylated compound
- Phosphate is passed from one substrate to another
- requires large free energy coupling reactions, because of unfavourable synthesis
PO3
Phosphoryl group
NAD+
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide
NADH formation equation
NAD+ + H+ + 2e- -> NADH
Describe substrate-level phosphorylation
1) hexose sugar formed
2) double phosphorylated triose formed
3) phosphoryl transfer from triose to ADP
Why do you need fermentation in the absence of oxygen?
To maintain glycolysis, through NAD+ electron acceptor regeneration
Where is NAD+ regenerated?
As a byproduct of the transition of acetaldehyde to ethanol
Describe the electron transport chain
- embedded into cell membrane
- 4 separate protein complices
- contains electron carriers
- complices I, III and IV span the membrane
Give an example of an electron carrier
Cytochrome c
What supplies the electrons to the electron transport chain
The tricarboxylic acid cycle
What is the tricarboxylic acid cycle
An oxidative metabolic cycle
Describe the process of electron transport
- each ETC complex is reduced the oxidised as it receives and passes on an electron pair to the proceeding complex (reduction-oxidative cycle)
- oxygen is the terminal electron acceptor
Describe oxygen reduction to water as the terminal electron acceptor
1/2O2 + 2e- + 2H+ <-> H2O