BIOLOGY 201L Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Carbon Fixation, Activation Energy, Hydrolysis
Document Summary
Metabolic pathways - linear reaction pathways where product of one reaction is starting material for the next reaction. Metabolism - total of all chemical rxns it needs to carry out to survive, grow, and reproduce. Catabolism breaks down foodstuffs into smaller molecules, generating energy and small molecules for cell. Anabolism (biosynthetic pathway) - energy from catabolism drives synthesis of molecules. 2nd law of thermodynamics - tendency of things to become disordered; systems will change spontaneously toward those arrangements that have the greatest probability. Entropy is measure of a system"s disorder. Heat is energy in its most disordered form. 1st law of thermodynamics - energy can"t be created or destroyed but can be converted. By linking heat-generating reactions to processes that maintain molecular order, cells can create order while going towards chaos. In photosynthesis, energy from sun is captured and stored as chemical-bond energy in activated carriers.
