Biochemistry II Lecture 2
Topic: Bioenergetics
Bioenergetics is a discipline in Biochemistry that studies the flow of energy within
living organisms.
It also looks at the efficiency of energy transformations between different organisms.
It includes the study of thousands of different cellular processes that leads to the
production and utilization of energy in forms such as ATP.
Glycogenesis, citric acid cycle and gluconeogenesis are examples of bioenergetics
processes
Energy questions:
What are the energy sources?
How is the energy conserved?
How does the energy converted to different forms?
How do chemical energy source metabolized and to what?
What are the components involved?
Where does the energy conversion take place?
What is the efficiency on each step of energy conversion?
Living things need energy
Living cells and organisms must perform work to stay alive, to grow, and to reproduce.
The ability to harness energy and to channel it into biological work is a fundamental
property of all living organisms; it must have been acquired very early in cellular
evolution.
Modern organisms carry out a remarkable variety of energy transductions, conversions of
one form of energy to another.
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Biochemistry II Lecture 2
They use the chemical energy in fuels to bring about the synthesis of complex, highly
ordered macromolecules from simple precursors.
They also convert the chemical energy of fuels into concentration gradients and
electrical gradients, into motion and heat, and, in a few organisms such as fireflies and
some deep-sea fish, into light.
Photosynthetic organisms transduce light energy into all these other forms of energy
The chemical mechanisms that underlie biological energy transductions have fascinated
and challenged biologists for centuries.
Antoine Lavoisier, before he lost his head in the French Revolution, recognized that
animals somehow transform chemical fuels (foods) into heat and that this process of
respiration is essential to life.
Living organisms consist of collections of molecules much more highly organized than
the surrounding materials from which they are constructed, and organisms maintain and
produce order, seemingly oblivious to the second law of thermodynamics.
But living organisms do not violate the second law; they operate strictly within it. The
reacting system is the collection of matter that is undergoing a particular chemical or
physical process; it may be an organism, a cell, or two reacting compounds.
The reacting system and its surroundings together constitute the universe.
In the laboratory, some chemical or physical processes can be carried out in isolated or
closed systems, in which no material or energy is exchanged with the surroundings.
Living cells and organisms, however, are open systems, exchanging both material and
energy with their surroundings; living systems are never at equilibrium with their
surroundings, and the constant transactions between system and surroundings explain
how organisms can create order within themselves while operating within the second law
of thermodynamics.
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Biochemistry II Lecture 2
Principles of Bioenergetics:
Bioenergetics and thermodynamics
Phosphoryl Group Transfers and ATP
Biological Oxidation- Reduction Reaction.
Biological energy transformations obey the laws of thermodynamics
The first law: is the principle of the conservation of energy:
for any physical or chemical change, the total amount of energy in the universe remains
constant; energy may change form or it may be transported from one region to another,
but it cannot be created or destroyed.
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Biochemistry II Lecture 2
Second law: The entropy (disorder) of the Universe is increasing
The second law of thermodynamics, which can be stated in several forms, says that the
universe always tends toward increasing disorder: in all-natural processes, the entropy of
the universe increases
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe increases
during all chemical and physical processes, but it does not require that the entropy
increase take place in the reacting system itself.
The order produced within cells as they grow and divide is more than compensated for by
the disorder they create in their surroundings in the course of growth and division.
In short, living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from the surroundings
free energy in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an
equal amount of energy as heat and entropy.
Three thermodynamic quantities:
Gibbs free energy (G) and free-energy change, G
Enthalpy (H) and Enthalpy change H
Entropy (S) and Entropy change S
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In Biological systems (At constant temperature and
pressure)
T: Absolute temperature
When entropy increases, ΔS has a + sign
When heat is released from the system to its surrounds, ΔH has a – sig
Cells Require Sources of Free Energy
Cells are isothermal systems—they function at essentially constant temperature (they also
function at constant pressure).
Heat flow is not a source of energy for cells, because heat can do work only as it passes
to a zone or object at a lower temperature.
The energy that cells can and must use is free energy, described by the Gibbs free-energy
function G, which allows prediction of the direction of chemical reactions, their exact
equilibrium position, and the amount of work they can in theory perform at constant
temperature and pressure.
Heterotrophic cells acquire free energy from nutrient molecules, and photosynthetic cells
acquire it from absorbed solar radiation.
Both kinds of cells transform this free energy into ATP and other energy-rich compounds
capable of providing energy for biological work at constant temperature.
Cells Require Sources of Free Energy Phosphoryl Group Transfers and ATP
ATP: Adenosine triphosphate
ADP: Adenosine diphosphate
AMP: Adenosine monophosphate
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Biological Oxidation-Reduction Reaction
The transfer of phosphate groups is one of the central features of metabolism.
Metabolic electron transfer reactions are also of crucial importance.
Elections move from various metabolic intermediates to more specialized carrier in
enzyme catalyzed reactions.
The carriers donate electrons to acceptors with higher electron affinities, with the release
of energy
Cells contain a variety of molecular energy transducers, which convert the energy of
electron flow into useful work.
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