Biological Example
It is known that an important metabolic cycle, glycolysis, displays temporal order. Glycolysis consists of the degradation of one molecule of glucose and the overall production of two molecules of ATP. The process is therefore of great importance to the energetics of living cells. The global glycolysis reaction involves glucose, ADP, NAD, pyruvate, ATP, and NADH.
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The details of the process are quite involved, however, a section of the process is autocatalyzed by Phosphofructokinase (PFK). This portion of the process is responsible for oscillations in the pathway that leads to the ability of the process to oscillate between an active and an inactive form. In other words, the autocatalytic reactions can turn the process off and on.
Read more about this topic: Autocatalytic Reaction
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—Desmond Tutu (b. 1931)