Question

You will be assigned a specific cellular respiration inhibitor for this discussion (Cyanide is my cellular respiration).

As you know by now, cellular respiration is essential for many organisms including plants, animals, and many single-celled organisms. What happens when a molecule interrupts cellular respiration? How might it do so?

You should spend approximately 3 hours on this assignment.

Instructions

1. Answer the following questions in a few paragraphs.
   • What is the basic purpose of cellular respiration? What are the reactants and products of cellular respiration overall? Also, give a basic description of the three main stages of cellular respiration (glycolysis, Kreb cycle, and the electron transport chain)
   • Your next paragraph will focus on your assigned inhibitor. You should find one to two reliable sources that discuss how your assigned inhibitor works. Focus on the enzyme inhibited by your assigned inhibitor, and the part of cellular respiration that would be affected.
   • What effect would the presence of your assigned inhibitor have on ATP production? What effect would the presence of your inhibitor have on the amount of NAD+, NADH, pyruvate, and oxygen present in the cell?
   • If cellular respiration is blocked, can cells switch to a backup method for making ATP?

Answer 1

When molecules interrupt cellular respiration the cell will eventually die as it is not able to produce energy.

Cellular respiration is the process of producing energy and releasing metabolic wastes.

Glucose and oxygen are the reactants and the end products are carbon dioxide and water with the liberation of energy in form of ATP.

3 steps are

1. Making energy: Breaks down glucose into pyruvate producing energy

Produces large amounts of electron carriers

2. Synthesis fir growth, reproduction and repair

3. Storage as glycogen and fat

Electrons from NADH and FADH2 are passed to protein complexes in the electron transport chain. As they are passed, the electrons lose energy, and some of that energy is used to pump hydrogen ions from the mitochondrial matrix into the intermembrane space. In the fourth protein complex, the electrons are accepted by oxygen, the terminal acceptor. The oxygen with its extra electrons then combines with two hydrogen ions, further enhancing the electrochemical gradient, to form water. If there were no oxygen present in the mitochondrion, the electrons could not be removed from the system, and the entire electron transport chain would back up and stop. The mitochondria would be unable to generate new ATP in this way, and the cell would ultimately die from lack of energy.

Cyanide blocks or inhibits oxidation phosphorylation in mitochondria by binding to cytochrome phosphorylase. As a result a shift from aerobic to anaerobic respiration occurs. ATP production decreases and depletion of cellular energy takes place. Hypoxia, tissue damage(necrosis) are the effects

If cellular respiration is blocked atp can still be produced by the glucose stored in the form of glycogen in liver.