the.com/cellular respiration
Burning sugar for a living, one mitochondrion at a time.
means The process by which cells break down glucose using oxygen to release usable energy (ATP), with carbon dioxide and water as byproducts.
from From Latin 'cellula' (little cell, a diminutive of 'cella,' storeroom or chamber) and 'respirare' (to breathe, from 're-' again and 'spirare' to breathe). 'Respiration' entered English for breathing itself long before anyone knew what happened inside a cell; only once microscopes and biochemistry revealed that cells consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide in their own internal exchange did scientists borrow the word for breathing and apply it to this quieter, molecular version — a cell 'breathing,' not through lungs but through its own chemistry.
- net yield
- about 30-32 ATP per glucose molecule
- real exhale
- your breath is literally carbon from burned food
- irony
- oxygen that sustains you also slowly rusts you
- shared ancestry
- mitochondria were once free-living bacteria