Question

What is respiration? Explain whether it is a catabolic process or anabolic process?

Answer 1

Respiration is one of the various processes of living organism performed for their survival. The definition of respiration differ with subjects. In physiology, respiration means the movement of oxygen from the external environment to the cells within the tissues, and transport of carbon dioxide out of the body that is in the opposite direction.The biochemical definition of respiration refers to a metabolic process by which energy is obtained by an organism in the form of ATP and NADPH by the process of oxidising nutrients and also releasing waste products. Physiologic respiration and cellular respiration are related and necessary to sustain one another. But both the processes are distinct cellular respiration usually occurs in individual cells of the organism, while physiologic respiration is concerned with the the diffusion and transportation of metabolites between the organism and the external environment.

Catabolism is a process which involves the metabolic processes that break and tear down biomolecules, while anabolism is a process where all of the metabolic processes leads to the building up of biomolecules.

Catabolic reactions are similar to the breaking down of food in our mouth to form simpler pieces but at a molecular level where the biomolecules are broken down to make them easier to utilize.Thus digestion is a catabolic activity relating to food intake where with large food molecules using water are broken down into smaller molecules. Later after digestion comes the role of cellular respiration which starts when smaller molecules after digestion are sent to the cells of the body to convert biochemical energy to ATP,which is a very high-energy molecule. This process is called cellular respiration and thus it too is a catabolic process which involves breaking of macromolecules that is small molecules from digestion to even smaller molecules of energy called ATP.

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