Primary Sources of Reducing Equivalents
Organotrophs: Organic compounds are used as electron donor.
Lithotrophs: Inorganic compounds are used as electron donor.
The electrons from reducing equivalents are needed by both, phototrophs and chemotrophs, to keep running reduction-oxidation reactions that transfer energy. The electron donors are taken up from the environment.
Organotrophic organisms are often also heterotrophic, using organic compounds as sources of electrons and carbon at the same time. Similarly, lithotrophic organisms are often also autotrophic, using inorganic sources of electrons and CO2 as inorganic carbon source.
Some lithotrophic bacteria can utilize diverse sources of electrons, depending on availability of possible donors.
Read more about this topic: Chemoorganotroph
Famous quotes containing the words primary sources, primary, sources and/or reducing:
“A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is direct and simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and talked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions ... too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)