Describe How an Oak Tree Grown in a Year

513 Words3 Pages
Over the course of a year many fundamental biological processes must occur for an oak tree, and the wider spectrum of all plants, to grow and act as supportive components to the ecosystem as a whole. Oak trees will obtain their energy from the ultimate source of energy for living organisms, the sun, and covert its light energy into organic molecules, in the process of photosynthesis, that can ultimately be converted into ATP cellular energy in respiration. Leaves of an oak tree are the main photosynthetic structure and will possess specialised features for optimum sunlight absorption, such as having a large leaf surface area with minimum overlapping between different leaves and long mesophyll cells possessing many chloroplasts for light absorption. The aforementioned chloroplasts contain chlorophyll pigment that is specifically responsible for absorbing light energy, and hence increasing the chloroplast’s electron pairs to higher energy levels causing them to leave and oxidise the molecule; the electrons are taken up by an electron carrier and passed down a series of oxidation- reduction reactions in the thylakoid membrane. Each carrier in the chain has a slightly lower energy level than the previous, so the remaining energy is used to combine Adenosine Di-phosphate with an inorganic phosphate molecule to make ATP cellular energy. Consequently, this ATP along with reduced NAPD co-enzyme are utilised in the light-independent reaction or Calvin Cycle to reduce CO2 and other carbon containing compound such as Glycerate-3-phosphate and triose phosphate into essential organic compounds such as glucose. The overall photosynthetic equation is 6CO2 + 6H2O C6H12O6 + 6O2. For photosynthesis to occur, oak trees require a plentiful supply of water and carbon dioxide -Water Transport and Root pressure and salts -CO2 stomata Because glucose cannot always be used up as
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