What Is Aerobic & Anaerobic Respiration?

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Respiration is one of the imperative functions of the body that are of crucial importance for all the living organisms be it human being, or the microscopic bacteria. In general the process of respiration serves two basic purposes in living organisms, the first one being disposal of electrons generated during catabolism and the second one being production of ATP. The respiration machinery is located in cell membranes of prokaryotes whereas it is placed in the inner membranes of mitochondria for eukaryotes. Respiration requires a terminal electron acceptor. Simply put, the respiration process, which uses oxygen as its terminal electron acceptor, is called aerobic respiration and the one, which uses terminal electron acceptors other than oxygen, is called anaerobic respiration. Differences between Aerobic and Anaerobic Respiration Starting from the bio-chemical pathway used to utilize bio-molecules, to the amount of energy produced in the respiration process, there exist a lot of differences between aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Let us discuss the two respiration processes separately with respect to the process, outcome and the chemical reactions involved in aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Aerobic Respiration Aerobic respiration is the process that takes place in presence of oxygen. Aerobic respiration is the metabolic process that involves break down of fuel molecules to obtain bio-chemical energy and has oxygen as the terminal electron acceptor. Fuel molecules commonly used by cells in aerobic respiration are glucose, amino acids and fatty acids.. The process of obtaining energy in aerobic respiration can be represented in the following equation: Glucose + Oxygen →Energy + Carbon dioxide + Water The aerobic respiration is a high energy yielding process. During the process of aerobic respiration as many as 38 molecules of ATP are produced
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