Pentose Phosphate Pathway

Question 1

what is the initial substrate for the pentose phosphate pathway?

Answer 1

glucose-6-phosphate

Question 2

what does the pentose phosphate pathway do/produce?

Answer 2

produces NADPH and converts glucose to ribose

Question 3

what are 4 things NADPH used for?

Answer 3

protecting the body from oxidative stress

being a source of electrons for anabolic metabolism

helping to make fatty acids

helping to make amino acids

Question 4

what is ribose used for?

Answer 4

the base sugar for nucleic acids (RNA and DNA)

Question 5

what happens to the glucose-6-phosphate in the first (oxidative) step of pentose phosphate pathway?

Answer 5

it gets converted to pentose-5-phosphate,

specifically, ribose-5-phosphate (which gets used to make nucleic acids like RNA and DNA)

Question 6

What else do you get out of the pentose phosphate pathway besides ribose and NADPH?

Answer 6

CO2

Question 7

What happens in step 2 (non-oxidative state) of the pentose phosphate pathway?

Answer 7

the 3 ribose-5-phosphates get rearranged into:

two ‘fructose-6-phosphates’

one ‘glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate’

that can go into glycolysis

Question 8

what can you do with fructose-6-phosphate that doesn’t go into glycolysis at the end of the pentose phosphate pathway?

Answer 8

it goes back to the beginning/gets used in the pentose phosphate pathway again.