Photosynthesis and Respiration: Energy Capture and Storage

Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are key processes for capturing and storing free energy in plants and animals.

### Understanding Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration: The Key to Life's Energy Cycle
* 🌿 Photosynthesis is the process by which autotrophs, such as plants, capture energy from the sun to convert **carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen**.
* 🌞 The light reaction of photosynthesis occurs in the thylakoid membrane of chloroplasts, where light energy is used to **split water, produce ATP, NADPH, and oxygen**.
* 🌱 The Calvin Cycle, which takes place in the stroma of the chloroplast, uses **ATP and NADPH** to convert carbon dioxide into sugars, **storing energy** in the process.
* 🌍 The evolution of photosynthesis is thought to have occurred around **2 billion years ago**, leading to the **accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere**.
* Chemosynthesis is an alternative energy-capture process used by organisms in low-light environments, such as **deep-sea vent communities**.
* 🔋 Cellular respiration is the process by which heterotrophs, including humans, extract energy from glucose by breaking it down into carbon dioxide and water, producing **ATP in the mitochondria**.
* 🔄 The electron transport chain in cellular respiration is similar to that in photosynthesis, using a series of protein complexes to **generate ATP** and ultimately combine electrons with oxygen to **form water**.
* Understanding these processes is crucial for grasping how organisms capture and utilize energy, with **photosynthesis capturing solar energy** and **respiration releasing it for cellular work**.

Hi. It's Mr. Andersen, and welcome
to Biology Essentials Video 13. This is on free energy capture and storage. But what
you'll quickly learn is that this is mostly about photosynthesis. And this is actually
a map of photosynthesis on our planet. So what you could see is both on land and
on the ocean, you'll see that photosynthesis is going to be highest in areas like here,
South America. That'd be the Amazon. Or eastern North America. Or you'd find it in a lot of
northern Europe and northern Asia. And so it's mostly about photosynthesis. And we also
see it in the ocean. So we're going to see a ton of it near the equator but not exactly
at the equator, and I imagine that has to do with the currents. The other thing it's going
to be about is respiration. And so I'm going to try to get through the whole thing on photosynthesis
and respiration. If it seems like I'm going

too fast or it's not understandable. I've
made a video on both photosynthesis and respiration individually, so take a look at those.
And I hope that will be helpful. So what am I going to talk about in this? Well, just like
in the last podcast, I'm going to talk about how life uses free energy. The goal of life
is to make ATP so we can use energy. Now there are two life strategies. There's the life strategy
of the autotrophs. An example would be a plant. Those are things that make their own food.
And then the heterotrophs. An example would be you. And you're a heterotroph. That means
you eat your own food. And so autotrophs on our planet mostly use photosynthesis. So they
take energy from the sun in both light reaction and the Calvin Cycle to make sugars, or to
make macromolecules that they can use.

an obscure group of organisms on our planet that don't have light available, and it doesn't mean they are out of luck. They use chemosynthesis. So they use the energy found in chemicals to actually make their food. The other lifestyle then is heterotrophs. Heterotrophs are going to use cellular respiration, which is essentially oxygen, mitochondria, sugar, and they're going to make ATP from that. It requires oxygen, which pulls on those electrons. We'll talk about that in a second. And the process is glycolysis, Krebs Cycle, and then finally the electron transport chain. If you don't happen to have oxygen, you can also use a process called fermentation. I'll explain that. Now the thing that I really haven't talked about, oh, I'll talk about evolution as well, but the one thing that I want to make sure that you understand is that autotrophs aren't making the food for us, they're making the food for

themselves. And so not only does a plant do photosynthesis, they then use cellular respiration to actually break the energy and get the energy out of the food that they ended up making. And so this kind of summarizes that cycle. So what we have are the way of the heterotrophs. They take organic molecules and oxygen and they use that to make carbon dioxide and water. We call that process cellular respiration. And then autotrophs will actually convert that back into organic molecules so they can then utilize that energy. And so most of those on our planet use photosynthesis, like plants. And most of the heterotrophs use cellular respiration. An example would be like a cheetah. But I do want to briefly talk about chemosynthesis. Chemosynthesis occurs where there's not a lot of light on our planet. Where's a great example of that? Deep dark in the ocean. And so these are giant tube worms which can get

something like 21 feet long. So pretty ridiculous.
But these tube worms actually have right here this portion where they're actually taking
in carbon dioxide, taking in oxygen, taking in hydrogen sulfide gas from these black smokers,
which is just organic materials coming out of a situated over a hot spot. And what they're
doing is feeding bacteria that live in their gut. Those bacteria that live in their gut
are actually taking that hydrogen sulfide gas, and they're utilizing the energy from
that to make simple carbohydrates. And so they don't require light at all. They're actually
making sugars using powers of the chemicals. Another example of that is what if you don't
have oxygen? Well, you can use a process called fermentation. And so this is how wine is made.
It's a barrel that they've actually cut in half. And so these are yeast that would die
because you're not letting them get any oxygen. But they can actually do alcoholic fermentation
to survive until they eventually die. We use

something called lactic acid fermentation
to do the same thing. It's a form of energy capture, but we don't require oxygen to do
it. Okay, so let's talk about photosynthesis and respiration. So this is my animation for
how photosynthesis works. And the one thing that you want to always... the problem
when you're doing photosynthesis and respiration is that you get so into the steps that you
don't really understand what's going on. You miss the forest for the trees. And so what
we're doing in photosynthesis is taking carbon dioxide, plants take that in, taking water
and converting that to glucose, and eventually to oxygen. And so if I animate it, it looks
like this. And so what we're doing is we're taking the carbon in carbon dioxide, and we're
actually turning that into carbon in glucose, releasing oxygen as a waste product. But what
we're really doing is we're storing energy.

in this glucose molecule. The delta G or the
free energy is positive. That means that we're storing energy in that glucose molecule. We're
actually storing it in these bonds right here, between the carbon and the hydrogen. Now it's
not as simple. I wish it was. It's not as simple a chemical reaction as this. It's actually
pretty complex. But what I don't want you to miss is I don't want you to miss what happens
to the carbon dioxide? What happens to the water and how does that convert into glucose
and oxygen? And so if you miss that, then I've done a bad job. Okay, whenever I'm thinking
about photosynthesis, I actually break it down into the two words so I can remember the different
parts. The photo part is the light reaction, and photo means light. And synthesis means
to build, and so that's going to be the Calvin Cycle. And so the photo part or the light
reaction is going to take place, the whole

thing of photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplasts. And here's a bunch of chloroplasts inside a plant cell, but the light reaction is going to take place right here. It's in the thylakoid membrane. And if we have a bunch of thylakoid membranes stacked up, then we call that whole thing a granum. So what happens in the light reaction? We take in water, we take in light, and we release oxygen, and then we store that energy in ATP and NADPH. The next step is the Calvin Cycle. Calvin Cycle, where's that take place? Well, that takes place in this liquid portion inside the chloroplast. That's called the stroma. And in the Calvin Cycle, we're going to take the energy of ATP and NADPH, and we're going to take carbon dioxide, and we're actually going to make sugars out of it. And so in summary, that's what photosynthesis is. It's taking in energy in the form of light, and eventually storing that energy in sugars.

So what is that sugar we're talking about?
Glucose, like I just mentioned a second ago. Now the actual process is not that simple.
And so the light reaction is where you should spend most of your time trying to figure out
photosynthesis. And so where are we? We are in the thylakoid membranes, so this is going
to be inside the chloroplast itself. And so what we get is light. And that light is going
to come into photosystem 2 and photosystem 1. Inside here we have chlorophyll. Chlorophyll
is a magical pigment that can absorb light energy and get excited and pass that excitement
on in the form of electrons. And so the first thing that happens, let me change color, is
that light comes in and that gets the chlorophyll excited. It also is going to pass an electron
down an electron transport chain. So let's follow where that electron goes. It eventually
goes to NADPH. And so that electron that goes

down this electron transport chain has to
come from somewhere. And so where is it coming from? It actually comes from the water. So
again, what is another thing that we need in the light reaction? We need water. And so
the energy is coming from that, or the electron is coming from the water. That's splitting
water, and it's splitting water into oxygen. So oxygen, remember, is one of the products
that we give off in photosynthesis. That's what you're breathing right now. But we also
create protons. Protons are simply hydrogen atoms that have lost their electrons. And
I'll get back to those in a second. So let's track those electrons again. So the electrons
are flowing through an electron transport chain in the thylakoid. And as they go through
these proteins, which I don't ever want you to memorize the names of, as they go through
these proteins, what they're doing is they're using their energy to actually pump protons
to the inside of the thylakoid membrane. And

so what we're doing is we're moving protons
to the inside of this membrane. So we're increasing the number of protons inside here. So we're
making it really positive on the inside of that thylakoid membrane. Now the protons have
nowhere to go. The only way that they can go is out through another protein, which is
called ATP synthase. And so it uses the energy of those flowing protons to actually make
our friend ATP. And so let's track what we've got. We've got light coming in. We've got
water breaking down into oxygen, to give up its electrons, and now we've made NADPH. That's
where the electrons end up, and then ATP. So we've stored the energy of that light in ATP
and NADPH. Now what do we use that light to do? Well, Melvin Calvin, who invented not,
but discovered the Calvin Cycle, shows the process that happens next. So essentially,
what you do is take in carbon dioxide, so

plants take that in through their stomata,
they then use the energy of ATP and NADPH to convert that into sugar. And so this is
a G3P molecule. But essentially, we can use that to make sugars inside a plant. And so
all these intermediary chemicals, you don't need to know. What you do need to know is that
we make ATP and NADPH. So we can use the energy of that to actually make sugars. Now, where
does the Calvin Cycle take place? Calvin Cycle is going to take place in the stroma, the
liquid portion of the cell. So that's how we store our energy in sugar. The evolution
of that in our planet, we think happened really early. So we think those first life forms
on our planet were actually using some form of photosynthesis, maybe chemosynthesis to
begin with, but we do know this. That about 2 billion years ago, when we look at the rock
layer, this rock is from about 2.1 billion

years ago, we start to see red showing up.
And red bands showing up. And what that indicates is that oxygen is being produced at appreciable
amounts. So this right here is actually a graph of atmospheric oxygen through time.
So here we are today, and this is for the last 3.8 billion life on our planet. We see that
the amount of oxygen has increased. And these two lines here are just the guesses that scientists
have. Kind of a high - low guess. And so we know that the oxygen levels on our planet
have increased over time. Where did that oxygen come from? It actually came from photosynthesis.
Next, let's go to cellular respiration. What happen in cellular respiration? Cellular respiration,
we're actually using the energy in those sugars. So in glucose, in the presence of oxygen, we're
breaking that down into carbon dioxide and water, and we're releasing energy from that.
So let's see what that looks like. So we break

down that glucose, that's an exergonic reaction.
We're releasing energy. We're making carbon dioxide. We're making water, but we're mostly
making energy in the form of ATP that we can use. Again, it's not as simple as this. So
let's get to what respiration really looks like and where it takes place. In order to
do cellular respiration, you need a mitochondria, and you also need one more thing. You need
O2. You need oxygen. So the parts of the mitochondria that you should become familiar with, first
of all, we've got an outer membrane. Outer membrane's going to be this portion right
here. We also have an inner membrane. So it looks like that. We have an inner membrane
space. The inner membrane space is going to be right between the outer and inner membrane.
And you see here that we have these folds that go on the inside of that inner membrane.
And what that does is increase the surface

area. But the last thing that we should become familiar with is actually called the matrix. Matrix is going to be the inside of the mitochondria. And so the parts of cellular respiration, the first part is called glycolysis. That'll actually take place out here. Next thing is going to be the Kreb's Cycle. Kreb's Cycle will take place in here. That's in the matrix. And then finally we have the electron transport chain. Electron transport chain is going to take place along that inner membrane. And so the reason we have that fold is to increase surface area. Now this looks a little scary, the diagram but it shouldn't be that scary because we're going to miss all of the intermediates. So what do we start with, glucose and we break that down into pyruvate. One thing that you should know is that glucose is a six carbon molecule and down here, pyruvate we have 2 three carbon molecules. We release a little

bit of ATP in glycolysis, and that takes place
outside of the mitochondria. Next, we enter into the Kreb's Cycle. And in the Kreb's Cycle,
we're going to take that carbon, which is in pyruvate, and we're going to release that as
carbon dioxide. But the important thing we're doing in the Kreb's Cycle is we're storing
energy. We're storing energy as N-A-D-H, NADH, and F-A-D-H-2, or FADH2. So we're storing the
energy that was found in the pyruvate in NADH and FADH2 so we can finally use that in the
electron transport chain. Let's look at what happens in a little more detail as far as
the electron transport chain. We've stored energy now in NADH. And we've stored energy
in FADH2. We're going to transfer that energy in the form of electrons, just like in photosynthesis.
We've now got an electron transport chain.

It's not in the thylakoid. It's the inner
membrane. But as we transfer that electron through the electron transport chain, we're
pumping protons to the outside of the inner membrane. So it's now in this inner membrane
space. We now have a build-up of all of this positive charge here. The only place it can
go is through our friend ATP synthase, and we eventually make ATP. So that energy that
you use right now, the energy you're using to think, to move, all of the actions, that
ATP comes from that flow of those protons through here. Now the puzzle's not quite complete
because we dropped off that energy of NADH and FADH2. Well, let's follow what happens
to that electron. That electron is eventually going to combine with oxygen and hydrogen,
and we're going to make H2O. And so who's pulling that electron the whole way? Our friend
oxygen. Oxygen is pulling that electron towards

it. It's highly electronegative, and when it
finally gets to it, we've made our product. We've made H2O, which is given off. But more
importantly, we've made ATP. And we've made energy through this process of cellular respiration.
So photosynthesis and respiration are how we utilize energy, free energy from the sun,
to make ATP, to make ourselves grow. So I hope that's helpful.

Photosynthesis and Respiration

Bozeman Science

The Role of Photosynthesis and Respiration in Free Energy Capture and Storage

Photosynthesis is the primary process for capturing energy on our planet, with the highest levels occurring in specific areas on land and in the ocean.

Life's goal is to produce ATP, with autotrophs using photosynthesis to make their own food, while heterotrophs rely on cellular respiration to produce ATP.

Heterotrophs can also use chemosynthesis, and in the absence of oxygen, fermentation can occur for ATP production.

The Process of Cellular Respiration and Photosynthesis

Plants use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose, releasing oxygen as a byproduct and storing energy.

Heterotrophs, like cheetahs, use cellular respiration to turn organic molecules and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water, to obtain energy.

In the absence of light, chemosynthesis allows organisms to produce energy by using chemicals, as seen in giant tube worms in the deep ocean, and fermentation is another alternative process used when there is no oxygen available, as in the production of wine.

Photosynthesis involves the storage of energy in glucose molecules through complex chemical reactions, including the light reaction and the Calvin Cycle.

The light reaction takes place in the thylakoid membrane, where light is absorbed, and energy is stored in ATP and NADPH, while the Calvin Cycle occurs in the chloroplast stroma, using ATP, NADPH, and carbon dioxide to produce sugars.

The process also involves the absorption of light by chlorophyll and the transfer of electrons through photosystem 2 and photosystem 1 to eventually produce NADPH.

The Role of Water in the Light Reaction of Photosynthesis

The electrons used in the light reaction of photosynthesis come from water, which is also where the oxygen is produced.

The process involves the pumping of protons to the inside of the thylakoid membrane, creating a positive charge, and ultimately resulting in the production of ATP.

This energy stored in ATP and NADPH is then used in the Calvin Cycle to convert carbon dioxide into sugar in the plant's stroma.

The Role of Oxygen in Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration

8 billion years, mainly due to photosynthesis.

Cellular respiration involves breaking down glucose with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, water, and ATP.

Mitochondria play a crucial role in cellular respiration, with glycolysis, the Kreb's Cycle, and the electron transport chain being the main stages, taking place in different parts of the mitochondria.

The Process of ATP Production in Cellular Respiration

ATP production in cellular respiration begins with glycolysis, where a small amount of ATP is generated outside the mitochondria.

The Krebs Cycle then stores energy in the form of NADH and FADH2, which are later used in the electron transport chain to pump protons and create ATP.

The process also involves the combination of electrons with oxygen and hydrogen to produce water, ultimately generating energy for the cell.