Friday, April 12, 2013

K is for kreb cycle. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Ok, K. A nice science K post for the evening. I've been meaning to brush up on the Krebs cycle for a while now, so today is a good excuse to do it.
We have questions. It's part of being alive. This is definitely the beginning of a rant I would love to get into, but I'll hold back for now and it feels as if we are taught the what to think and what the answers are, but not always how to get there. Some the story of how they came across the answer is fun. Sometimes the people are interesting. Sometimes, the story helps people understand the concept (I'm looking at you, Imaginary numbers!)
The Krebs Cycle (or the citric acid cycle) is really hard to wrap your head around if you don't speak chemistry (alpha-ketoglutarate?) but it's interesting to think about because cells are fascinating once you start learning about them. I personally find the computational side a great time, but cells exist in living organisms and reproduce. Have you ever wondered how a cell gets energy, or even if a cell needs energy?
There are two different types of processes, an anaerobic process, and aerobic process. The Krebs cycle is the second step in the three step cellular resperation phase that occurs after glycolysis, which doesn't use oxygen. I'm told that the discovery of this first step happened by mistake, which is definitely something I'm looking up later. Anyways, many worked to try and understand how oxygen played a part in celulluar resperation, until Hans Adolf Krebs was able to able to piece together the research that came before him to come up with the steps to the citric acid cycle.
It's an 8 step process that produces NADH+H and FADH, vital compents for ATP whcih provides energy for cells. I quickly losing focus here, so I going to wrap this up so I can go watch TV and drink beer. Can Adam Intrigue A Super Foxy Mama Okay! There's a way to remeber the steps. And you should read this, because my ADHD has taken hold. It's time for me to run naked through the streets.

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