Fermentation
Fermentation is another process by which cells can extract energy from glucose. It is not a form of cellular respiration, but it does generate ATP, break down glucose, and produce waste products. Fermentation, like aerobic respiration, begins by breaking glucose into two pyruvate molecules. From here, it proceeds using endogenous organic electron receptors, whereas cellular respiration uses exogenous receptors, such as oxygen in aerobic respiration and nitrate in anaerobic respiration. These varied organic receptors each generate different waste products. Common products are lactic acid, lactose, hydrogen, and ethanol. Carbon dioxide is also commonly produced. Fermentation occurs primarily in anaerobic conditions, although some organisms such as yeast use fermentation even when oxygen is plentiful.
Read more about this topic: Cellular Waste Product
Famous quotes containing the word fermentation:
“Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“A tree is made to live in peace in the color of day and in friendship with the sun, the wind and the rain. Its roots plunge in the fat fermentation of the soil, sucking in its elemental humors, its fortifying juices. Trees always seem lost in a great tranquil dream. The dark rising sap makes them groan in the warm afternoons. A tree is a living being that knows the course of the clouds and presses the storms because it is full of birds’ nests.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“Unquiet souls!
MIn the dark fermentation of earth,
In the never idle workshop of nature,
In the eternal movement,
Ye shall find yourselves again.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)