the.com/krebs cycle
the cell's tiny furnace, burning sugar to keep you alive one spin at a time.
means a loop of eight chemical reactions inside mitochondria that strips energy from food to make fuel for the rest of the cell.
from named after hans krebs, who mapped the cycle in 1937 from pigeon breast muscle and won the 1953 nobel prize for it; also called the citric acid cycle or tca cycle after its starting molecule, citrate.
rejected firstnature initially turned down krebs's landmark paper.
per turn outputeach spin yields 3 nadh, 1 fadh2, 1 gtp.
universal loopruns almost identically in bacteria, plants, and humans.
not a straight lineit is a circle because oxaloacetate regenerates itself.
for instance
mitochondrial matrix — the actual cellular compartment where all eight steps occur.
pigeon breast muscle — krebs's original 1937 experimental tissue in oxford.
acetyl-coa entry — the two-carbon molecule that kicks off every cycle turn.
citrate synthase — the first enzyme, often the cycle's rate-limiting bottleneck.