Microbial Metabolism

Today the lecture was still on microbial metabolism. We continued on this topic a little bit more. There are three types of cellular respiration – aerobic respiration (require oxygen), anaerobic respiration (does not require oxygen)  and fermentation (lactic acid fermentation, alcohol fermentation). The metabolic pathways for aerobic respiration are glycolysis, transition reactions, citric acid cycle and ETC& chemiosmosis.

Photosynthesis is the process where light energy is captured to synthesize ATP, NADH or NADPH. Prokaryotic organisms that undergoes this process are green sulfur bacteria (Chlorobium), green non-sulfur bacteria (Chloroflexus), purple sulfur bacteria (Chromatium) and purple non-sulfur bacteria (Rhodobacteria) and cyanobacteria.

Carbon fixation is the process where CO2 is converted into inorganic form. The most common pathway for this process is Calvin Cycle.

Then we continue with nutritional types of microorganisms.

What I like about this topic is, from the name you get all the information without even have to memorize it.

ENERGY SOURCES

Photo = light

Chemo = organic/inorganic compounds

CARBON SOURCES

Auto = self feeders

Hetero = feeders on others

ELECTRON SOURCES

Litho = inorganic

Organo = organic

So basically if the type of nutrition is photoorganoheterotroph – it means, light is the energy source, organic C molecules is the carbon source and organic molecules is the electron source. Easy isn’t?

One more is mixotroph. It alter metabolic patterns in response to environmental changes. Which means it may use either light or organic/inorganic compounds as energy sources.

For the next class, there will be a bit explanation on green sulfur bacteria (Chlorobium), green non-sulfur bacteria (Chloroflexus), purple sulfur bacteria (Chromatium) and purple non-sulfur bacteria (Rhodobacteria) and cyanobacteria.  I will update it later!