The fate of pyruvate Having now familiarised ourselves with the nature of carboxylic acids, let’s return to Krebs, who was wrestling with their fate. We’ve seen that pyruvate itself plays a central role in respiration, yet Krebs knew that other carboxylic acids were involved too. The strange thing was that virtually all of them had more carbons than pyruvate, between four and six carbon atoms in length, compared to just three carbons in pyruvate.
