Environmental Microbiology

Presented by
Ida Munfarida, M.Si, M.T
TL Saintek UINSA
BIOENERGETICS
• All living matter, from the conventional basic unit of life, the cell, to a
higher-order integrated manifestation of cells, an organism, exists an
open dynamical system requiring capabilities for extracting energy from
respective interstitial, host, or ambient environments, for converting
that same energy to biologically useful forms, and for employing
biologically useful energy to drive energetically expensive life processes.
• All of biophysics and biochemistry as they concern the study and
description of energy transformations that occur during thousands of
organic chemical reactions in living soft matter.
BIOENERGETICS
• Catabolism
• Anabolism
Metabolism
• Metabolism is the process through which living systems acquire and use
free energy to carry out functions
• Catabolism is the degradation pathway to salvage components and
energy from biomolecules such as nucleotide, proteins, lipids, and
polysaccharides. The process generates energy
• Anabolism is the biosynthesis of biomolecules such as nucleotides,
proteins, lipids, and polysaccharides from simple precursor molecules.
This process requires energy.
BIOENERGETICS
Catabolism

• Transforming more complex and more reduced metabolites into

simpler, more oxidized products accompanied by the generation of
adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and reducing power in the form of
reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH).
• Ex :
• transformation of glucose to carbon dioxide and water by the
combination of glycolysis and the tricarboxylic acid cycle
Anabolism
• referred to as biosynthesis, consumes energy, rather than producing it,
typically taking more oxidized molecules and transforming them into
more complex, more highly reduced end-products.
• carried out by many photosynthetic organisms, involves the fixation of
atmospheric CO2 to form glucose, catalyzed by the enzymes which
constitute the Calvin cycle:
Two important implications of the reactions
• (1) that redox reactions play an important role in metabolic
transformations, with the cofactors nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide
(NAD+) often acting as electron acceptor in catabolic pathways and
NADPH as electron donor in anabolism and
• (2) that energy which is generated by catabolism is then used in
biosyntheses (almost always in the form of ATP).

The ways in which energy in the form of ATP is produced and is

utilized constitutes bioenergetics, and will be discussed in greater
detail later
REDOX REACTIONS IN METABOLISM
What is an oxidation reaction?

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What is a reduction reaction?

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Guidelines For Redox Reactions
• Oxidation and reduction always occur together
• Total number of e- lost by one substance is the same as the total
number of e- gained by the other
• For a redox reaction to occur, something must accept the e- that are lost
by another substance
REDOX REACTIONS IN METABOLISM
• Since many of the transformations undergone by metabolites involve
changes in oxidation state, it is understandable that cofactors have been
developed to act as electron acceptors/donors.
• Two of the most important are NAD+ and NADP+
• NAD + can accept two electrons and a proton (a hydride ion) from a
substrate like ethanol, in a reaction catalysed by alcohol dehydrogenase,
to give the oxidized product, acetaldehyde and the reduced cofactor
NADH plus a proton.
REDOX REACTIONS IN METABOLISM
• Whereas redox reactions on metal centres usually only involve electron
transfers, many oxidation/reduction reactions in intermediary
metabolism, as in the previous case, involve not only electron transfer,
but hydrogen transfer as well hence the frequently used denomination
‘dehydrogenase.’
• Note that most of these dehydrogenase reactions are reversible.
REDOX REACTIONS IN METABOLISM
• Redox reactions in biosynthetic pathways usually use NADPH as their
source of electrons. In addition to NAD+ and NADP+, which intervenes in
redox reactions involving oxygen functions, other cofactors like
riboflavin (in the form of flavin mononucleotide, FMN and flavin
adenine dinucleotide, FAD) participate in the conversion of single bonds
between methylene carbons to double bonds
The structure of NAD+ and NADP+
The flavin coenzymes FAD
and FMN. Whereas FMN
consists simply of riboflavin
monophosphate, FAD has
an AMP unit joined to
riboflavin monophosphate.
Note that in contrast to
NAD+, flavins can be half-
reduced to the
stable radical FADH or fully
reduced to the
dihydroflavin shown.
Catabolic pathways of
metabolism
GLYCOLYSIS
• Glycolysis is an almost
universal pathway for
glucose catabolism, widely
distributed in living
organisms which converts
glucose into two molecules
of pyruvate with the net
production of two
molecules of ATP and two
molecules of NADH.
Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle
• often referred to as the Kreb’s cycle.
• This represents the biochemical hub of intermediary metabolism, not
only in the oxidative catabolism of carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids
in aerobic eukaryotes and prokaryotes, but also as a source of
numerous biosynthetic precursors.
The reactions of the tricarboxylic acid cycle
To be continued