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Article: Oxidative Phosphorylation
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- Biology
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Oxidative Phosphorylation
Glycolysis
and the
Krebs cycle
both generate the high-energy compound adenosine triphosphate (
ATP
) directly, by
substrate
-level phosphorylation, but this represents only a small fraction of the energy in each
glucose
that passes through these pathways. Much more of the energy in glucose is conserved in the form of high-energy electrons carried in pairs by the electron "shuttles" NADH and FADH
2
, which are generated in glycolysis and the Krebs cycle. In
aerobic
cells, these high-energy electrons are used to produce more ATP by oxidative phosphorylation, a process during which the electrons are passed to molecular oxygen via an
electron transport ...