Which Molecule Is Used as Fuel for a Cell?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Brian with ericksontutoring.blogspot.com. Today we are going to discuss which molecule is used as fuel for a cell? To answer it plainly, ATP Adenosine Triphosphate is the fuel of cells. It sort of serves a battery function and we'll discuss why. ATP is essentially Adenine which is an amino acid and or sorry it is a nitrogenous base and it has three phosphate groups attached to it the triphosphate. Now the bonds between these phosphate groups are extremely high energy. They don't necessarily really want to hold on to each other but when you break one of those high energy bonds you release a ton of energy and that released energy is used to do all sorts of different work in the cell so ATP it is produced during cellular respiration. There is three steps glycolysis, creb cycle and then oxidative phosphorylation also known as the electronic transport chain but the important thing to know is that ATP is definitely the fuel of cells and organisms and without it life would be at least a very very different place if not it might not exist at all. So ATP is the molecule that's used as fuel for cells."