The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

(Science writer Ed Yong’s seminal book I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life provides a panoramic view of our intimate and generally symbiotic pact with bacteria.)

Author backrub?

The deeper slow burn of sugars to produce energy occurs in mitochondria. (Bacterial cells, lacking mitochondria, can use only the first chain of reactions.) Here the end products of glycolysis (literally, the chemical breakdown of sugar) are fed into a cycle of reactions that ultimately produce water and carbon dioxide. This cycle of reactions involves the use of oxygen (and is therefore called aerobic) and is a small miracle of energy production: it generates a much larger harvest of energy, again, in the form of ATP molecules.

How mitochondria producde ATP