Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Lesson 9.1
Cellular Respiration and the Role of the Mitochondrion
Contents
Introduction 1

Learning Objectives 2

Warm Up 3

Learn about It! 5

Cellular Respiration 5
Aerobic Respiration 6
Anaerobic Respiration and Fermentation 7
The Role of Mitochondria in Cellular Respiration 8
Reactants and Products of Cellular Respiration 10

Key Points 11

Check Your Understanding 12

Challenge Yourself 13

Bibliography 14
Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Lesson 9.1

Cellular Respiration and the Role of

the Mitochondrion

Introduction
You may already have felt exhausted after accomplishing piles of work several times in your
life. In school, you always spend energy doing piles of work and tasks assigned by your
teachers. When you get home, you still manage to do your homework after a tiring day in
school. After doing your homework, there are stacks of plates on the sink waiting for you to
clean them. Sometimes, after doing your responsibilities, you check your social media
accounts to cope with the latest news and trends and catch up with your distant friends.

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Have you ever wondered why you can do such things? It is as if you’ve got plenty of energy
stored inside you that helps you in accomplishing these. In between doing these things, you
either eat or rest to recharge.

Eating is one of the best things to do to regain our strength. Not only does it fill our empty
stomachs, but it also gives us enough strength to do the things we need to accomplish.
Eating is an essential part of our lives because it is one of the ways that we can survive.
When we eat, our food gets digested in our bodies to obtain essential substances and
nutrients. These essential substances are used by our body cells to carry out different
functions. However, to carry out numerous and varieties of activities, our cells need energy.
The energy used by our body cells is obtained and processed from the food we eat. How can
energy be produced from food? Where is it produced?

Learning Objectives DepEd Competency

In this lesson, you should be able to do the Explain the major features and
sequence the chemical events of
following:
cellular respiration
● Describe cellular respiration and (STEM_BIO11/12-IIa-j-7).

the role of mitochondria in

cellular respiration.
● Distinguish the processes of
cellular respiration.
● Determine the reactants and
products of cellular respiration.

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Warm Up
Eyes on the Prize 15 minutes
Is it fulfilling when you are rewarded for the things you have done? When you are being
rewarded, it motivates you to do better. It somehow gives you a sense of fulfillment when
someone recognizes your hard work. In this activity, you will be encountering sets of
questions about the previous lesson. Your answers will be checked and if all are correct, you
will be receiving rewards.

Materials
● 6 oranges
● 6 sweet candies
● 102 energy chips (paper cut-outs)

Procedure
1. Divide the class into three groups.
2. Each group will be assigned to a learning station to answer questions about
photosynthesis.
3. Group 1 is assigned to station 1 to answer three easy questions about
photosynthesis.
4. Group 2 is assigned to station 2 to answer two average questions about
photosynthesis.
5. Group 3 is assigned to station 3 to answer one difficult question about
photosynthesis.
6. Each group will only be given three minutes to answer the questions in each station.
7. After three minutes, your group needs to move to the next station to do the task.
Group 1 will move to station 2, group 2 will move to station 3, while group 3 will
move to station 1.
8. The rotation of the groups in the learning stations will continue until all groups have
answered the questions in all stations.
9. Place your answers in Table 9.1.1 which will be checked by your teacher after the

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

activity.
10. The groups who answered all the questions in station 1 correctly will receive 2
candies. If the groups have also correctly answered the questions in station 2, they
will receive 2 oranges. For station 3, the group will receive 34 energy chips, which are
convertible to recitation points, if they answer the difficult question correctly. If your
group has answered all the questions correctly, you will receive a total of 38 rewards.
11. The group with the most number of rewards will be declared as winners of the
activity.

Data Table
Table 9.1.1. Questions in each learning station

Learning
Photosynthesis question/s Answer(s)
Station

What are examples of organisms that can

undergo photosynthesis?

Why is photosynthesis important to the

1
organism?

What will happen to organisms that undergo

photosynthesis if they cannot use this process?

What is the green part of the cell that

photosynthesis takes place in?
2
What are the necessary components for
photosynthesis to occur?

Can photosynthesis occur without sunlight?

3
Why or why not?

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Guide Questions
1. What are the main components of the candies and oranges that you received as
rewards?
2. How do the components of candies and oranges help our bodies function?
3. What does the third reward represent and why is it important?

Learn about It!

Cellular Respiration
In the previous lesson, it was discussed that plants make their own food through
photosynthesis. At the end of the process, glucose with a chemical formula of C6H12O6 , is
produced. Glucose is the primary source of energy in humans. The body uses the available
glucose to produce energy. In the excess of glucose in the blood, the liver normally stores it
in the form of glycogen. The liver can store the excess glucose from the blood with the help
of insulin produced by pancreas. Insulin also affects the ability of cells to absorb glucose,
to be used in cellular respiration, from the blood. In certain conditions such as excessive
alcohol consumption, the pancreas does not function well which causes the insulin level to
decrease. When the situation gets worse, people whose pancreas do not function well may
develop diabetes. Diabetes is characterized by lack of insulin or resistance to insulin.
People with diabetes have high levels of sugar in the blood since the glucose cannot be
absorbed by the cells for respiration. But when a normal level of insulin is present to
balance the blood glucose level, cellular respiration is not disrupted.

Glucose is a high-energy molecule that needs to be broken down through the process of
cellular respiration. Cellular respiration is a process that involves the oxidation and
reduction of molecules to produce energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
Oxidation is the process of losing electrons while reduction is the process of gaining
electrons. Cellular respiration uses oxygen molecules and releases carbon dioxide as one of
its by-products (as shown in Fig. 9.1.1).

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Fig. 9.1.1 The overall equation of cellular respiration (aerobic) is shown above. The glucose
molecule is oxidized and becomes carbon dioxide while oxygen molecules are reduced and
become water molecules.

This is the reason why humans and animals need to breathe in oxygen and expel carbon
dioxide. It is the opposite of photosynthesis which requires carbon dioxide to start the
process and releases oxygen as its by-product. Cellular respiration can happen in two
conditions—with or without oxygen. Aerobic respiration is the process of producing
energy that uses oxygen while anaerobic respiration is the process that does not use
oxygen.

How does aerobic respiration differ from anaerobic

respiration?

Aerobic Respiration
Aerobic respiration is the process of breaking down organic nutrients from food, such as
glucose, to produce energy involving oxygen molecules. Organisms that are exposed to an
environment where oxygen is present do aerobic respiration to produce energy. Aerobic
respiration involves four stages—namely glycolysis, Krebs cycle, electron transport
chain, and chemiosmosis. In the first part of aerobic respiration which is glycolysis, oxygen
is not used. However, in the latter part of the process, oxygen is already used as an electron
acceptor which results in the formation of water molecules.

Processes in cellular respiration

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Glycolysis is the first part of aerobic respiration and it involves the breakdown of glucose
into pyruvate, a 3-carbon molecule. The product of glycolysis then enters the Krebs cycle in
which molecules are oxidized and electrons are picked up by electron carriers namely NAD+
(nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) and FAD (flavin adenine dinucleotide).

Glucose and pyruvate

Lastly, the electron transport chain and chemiosmosis are the processes of aerobic
respiration that involve the oxidation of electron carriers which results in the production of
ATP and the formation of water through the reduction of oxygen molecules. At the end of
the aerobic respiration, there are 38 net ATP molecules produced. A detailed explanation
of each stage of aerobic respiration will be discussed in the next learning units.

Anaerobic Respiration and Fermentation

Anaerobic respiration is the process of producing energy without involving oxygen.
Glucose can be broken down to produce energy without using oxygen. This happens in the
muscle cells of humans and other prokaryotic organisms like methanogens, an archaeon,
which uses carbon dioxide as the final electron acceptor instead of oxygen. The process of
anaerobic respiration is just the same as aerobic respiration. However, the final electron
acceptors can be nitrate, sulfur, carbon dioxide instead of oxygen.

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Another way that organisms can produce energy without involving oxygen is through
fermentation. In fermentation, glycolysis happens in which glucose is broken down into
pyruvate. However, pyruvate does not enter the Krebs cycle nor the electron transport
chain, instead, it undergoes fermentation and becomes lactic acid or alcohol. A detailed
explanation about anaerobic respiration and fermentation will be discussed in the next
learning units.

Fermentation has many practical applications. Brewing beer and other fermented food and
drinks are some examples of products that are produced by the process.

Why is anaerobic respiration common in

microorganisms compared to larger organisms?

The Role of Mitochondria in Cellular Respiration

You have probably encountered the word “mitochondria” in your previous lessons about
organelles. The mitochondria are the major sites of energy production. Energy is produced
through a process of cellular respiration and the mitochondria play a vital role in this. The
number of mitochondria varies in each cell depending on the activities carried out by the
cell. If the cell carries out numerous activities, like the muscle cells, it may contain thousands
of mitochondria. If cells like the fat cells do not need energy to function, they may only
contain a few mitochondria. The structures of mitochondria help it to efficiently function
during cellular respiration. Mitochondria has an outer membrane, an inner membrane
that folds into cristae, intermembrane space, and a matrix (as shown in Fig. 9.1.2).

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Fig. 9.1.2 The structure of mitochondria helps in the production of ATP during cellular
respiration.

The outer membrane and the inner membrane of the cell create an intermembrane
space. The intermembrane space is responsible for holding the protons that are pumped
out of the matrix. The mitochondrial matrix is where ATP synthesis and Krebs cycle
happen. Furthermore, the inner membrane of the mitochondria contains the proteins
involved in the electron transport chain as well as the ATP synthase. Cristae, on the other
hand, are folds of the inner membrane which increase the surface area for ATP production.

Did You Know?

For many organisms, like humans, the mitochondria are only
maternally inherited. This means that the mitochondria that we
have come from our mothers.

During fertilization of egg and sperm cells, the tail of the sperm cell
disintegrates from its head when it enters the egg cell.
Mitochondria are located on the sperm’s tail. So, basically, the
mitochondria are maternal rather than paternal.

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Reactants and Products of Cellular Respiration

In every chemical reaction, there are reactants that start the process and products that are
produced after or during the process. In cellular respiration, the reactants are the glucose
and oxygen molecules while water, carbon dioxide, and ATP molecules are the products.
In the general formula of cellular respiration, glucose (C6H12O6) is oxidized forming carbon
dioxide while oxygen (O2) is reduced forming water (H2O).

The general equation of cellular respiration

Glucose molecules, the simplest form of sugar, are the main source of energy for humans
and animals. These molecules can be obtained from ingested and digested food. Glucose
is used by the cells to generate energy in the form of ATP by undergoing cellular respiration,
specifically aerobic respiration. During cellular respiration, glucose is broken down and
oxidized resulting in the formation of carbon dioxide molecules, one of the by-products of
cellular respiration. Carbon dioxide, as a by-product of cellular respiration, is expelled from
the body through the lungs in exchange with oxygen that is obtained from the environment.

We get glucose from the food that we eat.

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Oxygen (O2) is also a reactant in cellular respiration. However, oxygen is not used in the first
stage of cellular respiration. Rather, it is used in the last stage, which is the electron
transport chain. The electrons carried by NADH and FADH2 are transferred to the electron
transport chain. During the electron transport chain, NADH and FADH2 are oxidized
releasing the electrons which pass through protein complexes in the inner membrane of
mitochondria. After electrons pass through protein complexes, it will be captured by the
oxygen molecules. When oxygen (O2) captures the electrons, it splits into two then reacts
with hydrogen ions forming water. Therefore, the reactant and product of the electron
transport chain are oxygen and water respectively.

Key Points
___________________________________________________________________________________________

● Cellular respiration is a catabolic pathway that uses glucose molecules to

produce energy in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
● Kinds of cellular respiration:
○ Aerobic respiration is the process of producing energy involving oxygen.
○ Anaerobic respiration is the process of producing energy without the
presence of oxygen.
● Glycolysis, Krebs cycle, electron transport chain, and chemiosmosis are the
four stages of cellular respiration.
● Krebs cycle and electron transport chain happen in the mitochondria of the cell.
● Mitochondria has four main parts:
○ outer membrane
○ inner membrane and cristae
○ intermembrane space
○ matrix
● Glucose and oxygen are the reactants while carbon dioxide and water are the
products of cellular respiration.

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

The major processes involved in cellular respiration

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Check Your Understanding

A. Identify the term described in each item.

1. It is the process of producing energy without the presence of oxygen.

2. An electron carrier that is involved in glycolysis.
3. It is one of the by-products of cellular respiration that is expelled through the lungs.
4. It is where the Krebs cycle happens.
5. It is the space between the outer and inner membranes of mitochondria.
6. It is the form of energy that body cells use.
7. The reactant of cellular respiration that acts as the final electron acceptor.
8. It is the last stage of cellular respiration.
9. The amount of energy produced after one cellular respiration.
10. It is a by-product of cellular respiration that is formed when oxygen reacts with
hydrogen.

B. Write true if the statement is correct, and false if otherwise. If

false, explain the inaccuracy in the statement.

1. Organisms living in an oxygen-deprived environment are not capable of producing

energy.
2. The electron carriers of cellular respiration are NAD+ and FADH2.
3. During exercise, the rate of cellular respiration decreases.
4. In anaerobic respiration, pyruvate does not undergo the Krebs cycle and electron
transport chain.
5. Glucose is the only reactant in fermentation.
C. Compare and contrast aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Fill in the Venn diagram

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

below.

Challenge Yourself

Answer the following questions and explain your answer.

1. Why do larger organisms produce more energy compared to microscopic

organisms?
2. How does the amount of oxygen in the air affect the rate of respiration?
3. Why do you think dieticians advice people who want to lose weight to lessen their
sugar intake?
4. What activities can increase the rate of respiration?
5. Why do humans take in more oxygen during exercise?

Bibliography

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Unit 9: Cellular Respiration

Campbell, Neil A. Biology. Frenchs Forest, N.S.W.: Pearson Benjamin Cummings, 2008.

Ching, Johnny A., Ching, Charmaine E. Biology. Quezon City, Philippines: St. Bernadette
Publishing House Corporation, 2012

Mader, Sylvia S., Michael Windelspecht, and Sylvia S. Mader. Introductory Biology. United
States: McGraw-Hill Create, 2014.

Miller, Kenneth R., and Joseph S. Levine. Prentice Hall Biology. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006.

Sabile, Mary Jane G., General Biology 1. Quezon City, Philippines: Phoenix Publishing House,
Inc., 2018.

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