Question

1. What terminal electron acceptor is used by a bacteria that breaks down glucose when growing with aerobic respiration? Is the glucose being oxidized or reduced?

Answer 1

Aerobic respiration is a mode of respiration that depends on O2 to generate energy in the form of ATP from glucose.

The glucose molecule is taken inside the cell and captured by phosphorylation. This phosphorylated form of glucose is then fed into glycolysis thereby generating pyruvate. Pyruvate enters the TCA cycle and is processed to remove electrons. These electrons are captured by the electron carriers like NAD+ and FAD.

As a result, the glucose is oxidized and is eventually converted to CO2 which is released out.

The electron carriers transfer the electrons to a system of proteins called the electron transport chain. Electron transport chain or ETC transfers these electrons at the expense of using the energy to transfer H+ ions against the concentration gradient.

The electrons are finally captured by the O2 molecule, hence it is termed as aerobic respiration.