Main content
MCAT
Course: MCAT > Unit 5
Lesson 15: Krebs (citric acid) cycle and oxidative phosphorylation- Krebs (citric acid) cycle and oxidative phosphorylation questions
- Oxidative phosphorylation questions
- The citric acid cycle
- Krebs / citric acid cycle
- Regulation of pyruvate dehydrogenase
- Regulation of Krebs-TCA cycle
- Electron transport chain
- Oxidative Phosphorylation: The major energy provider of the cell
- Oxidative phosphorylation and chemiosmosis
- Regulation of oxidative phosphorylation
- Mitochondria, apoptosis, and oxidative stress
- Calculating ATP produced in cellular respiration
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Regulation of oxidative phosphorylation
Created by Jasmine Rana.
Want to join the conversation?
- If not allosteric then through what mechanism is ETC regulated by ATP and ADP?(8 votes)
- Atshe attributed it to Le Chatelier's Principle, but it would be more correct to say that ETC is regulated by the Energy Charge of the cell and fluctuations in magnitude of the electrochemical gradient experienced across the mitochondrial inner membrane. 6:25
When the concentration of ADP increases in the cytosol, it is transported into the mitochondrial matrix via a protein called ATP-ADP translocase. This is a form of active transport enabled by the higher concentration of hydrogen ions in the intermembrane space and by the fact that ADP carriers a charge of -3 and ATP carriers a charge of -4. Thus, each time ADP replaces ATP in the matrix, the magnitude of the EC gradient is slightly lessened.
In this sense, ATP and ADP do not directly regulate ETC, it is their transport (and the action of phosphate transporters) that diminishes the magnitude of the EC gradient, which is what signals the cell to activate the ETC.(16 votes)
- why does the corrections done on videos not show up when you do full screen??(8 votes)
- At, shouldn't the H+ be on the side of NAD+ (products) of the oxidation of of NADH, such that the reaction is NADH --> NAD+ + H+ + 2e- ? 5:23(5 votes)
- It is because the entire reaction is coupled together as a redox reaction.
(you cant have a reduction without an oxidation)
And because NADH/NAD+ carries 1 proton and 2e- at a time
So if the half reaction for the oxidation of NADH is:
NADH --> NAD+ + H+ + 2e-
(is also commonly written as NADH + H+ --> NAD+ 2H+ +2e-)
and the half reaction of the reduction of O2 is:
1/2O2 + 2H+ + 2e- --> H2O
Then coupling the reactions together we get:
NADH + 1/2O2 + 2H+ + 2e- --> NAD+ + H+ + 2e- + H2O
When we simplify this equation we get a net equation of:
NADH + H+ + 1/2O2 --> NAD+ + H2O
**notice that the products/reactants, oxidation states, and the charges are equal on both sides allowing us to verify that the equation is indeed correct.
So for your question the 2 hydrogens next to 1/2 O2 in the video are actually representative of the hydrogen lost in NADH and a second hydrogen from the acidic environment.
Let me know if that helps or if you need a further explanation!(6 votes)
- So, does the régulation of ETC obey to the "LeChatelier" prinple?(3 votes)
- Yes, depending on levels of ATP and ADP, as well as NADH and NAD+.
If ATP or NAD+ increase (products), this makes the ETC slow down (remember that the ETC is always active, so it cannot stop)
If ADP or NADH increase (reactants), this will signal the ETC to speed up(3 votes)
- How ATP is produced by using protons?(1 vote)
- The Setup
==============
Along the inner membrane of mitochondria, the electron transport chain (ETC) receives protons from electron carriers NADH and FADH2, which accumulated throughout the metabolic pathway of organic substrates (glycolysis, pyruvate oxidation, and the kreb's cycle). Electrons then flow through the ETC, where hydrogens are pumped into the intermembrane space from the matrix; generating a proton gradient.
Electromotive Force
==================
ATP synthase, a transmembrane protein embedded within the inner mitochondrial membrane then allows the protons to flow down their concentration gradient back into the matrix, producing an electron motive force (EMF). This electrochemical energy is then transformed into mechanical energy by ATP synthase.
ATP Production
==============
As the protons flow through the ATP synthase, they produce mechanical energy. ATP synthase is a motor of sorts! As they flow through the protein, they rotate a complex unit inside of a stationary head. An easier way of imagining this is to think of a fan or turbine. As the wind blows on the fans, they turn! This mechanical energy is then converted into the chemical bond energy needed to combine the ADP and phosphate together to make ATP inside the mitochondrial matrix.(4 votes)
- Aton the left side of the diagram, should it not say NADH -> NAD+ and H+? As it was in Sal's video? 5:19(2 votes)
- In this case, the emphasis was on the stoichiometric balance between the reactants and the products, and therefore two protons were needed on the left side to account for the two that combined with the reduced oxygen atom to form water. I hope that was helpful! :)(1 vote)
- How is osmosis related to chemiosmosis?(1 vote)
- Osmosis is the movement of molecules of a solvent through a semipermeable membrane down their concentration gradient.
Chemiosmosis is the movement of ions through a semipermeable membrane down their electrochemical gradient.(1 vote)
- Since H2O is one of the products of OXPHOS, so according to Le Chatelier's principle, will more water slow down the OXPHOS process?(1 vote)
- In the discussion fromonwards (the last half of the video), are the oxygen and water not really considered in the Le Chatelier's regulation (reactant vs. product balance) because the cell already has so many of those molecules floating around? Is that why we focus exclusively on ATP/NAD+ for products and ADP/NADH for reactants in understanding this regulation? 5:00(1 vote)
- Great video. I want to make one clarification about [ADP] being the important "limiting" variable controlling oxidative phosphorylation in vivo. That may be true for many tissues, such as skeletal muscle. But in the heart, the opposite is true: [ADP] levels during rest and exercise conditions are much higher than the apparent Km for ADP and inorganic phosphate levels tend to be much lower than they are in skeletal muscle. As a results, it is phosphate that is the "limiting" controller regulating oxidative phosphorylation in the myocardium.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In talking about how oxidative phosphorylation is actually regulated inside of our cells, I find it helpful to remind
myself of two basic things about this pathway. So the first is, what is the purpose of
oxidative phosphorylation? So remember, this is a process that takes place inside of the mitochondria in the electron transport chain, right? And it's sole purpose is to produce lots of ATP. So remember, ATP can be
produced without oxygen, through substrate-level phosphorylation which does take place in glycolysis and also the Krebs cycle, but what's cool about
electron transport chain and oxidative phosphorylation is that by having oxygen and having
the electrons shuttled through these electron carrier molecules like NADH and FADH, it allows the body to produce efficiently a whole lot of ATP, which is important for many of our tissues which can't survive just on
substrate-level phosphorylation. For example, your brain and your heart, and some other tissues in your body, really rely on the
electron transport chain to produce most of it's ATP. The second point that's
important to recognize is that oxidative phosphorylation is the kind of common end pathway of aerobic respiration. What do I mean by this? Remember that there are many
different types of fuels that can enter cellular respiration. We've talked about glucose
and also fatty acids can enter cellular respiration as well as occasionally,
under extreme starvation, amino acids can also enter, but ultimately, all of
these are broken down and much of their reducing power is stored in the electron
carrier molecules like NADH and FADH2 that
are ultimately shuttled, as I mentioned before, to the electron transport
chain to produce as ATP. Alright. So how do these two points relate back to how oxidative
phosphorylation is regulated? Well this first point simply
reminds me that the major form of regulation in oxidative phosphorylation is looking at the energy
needs of the cells, and the way that the body does this is by looking at the levels of ADP compared to the levels of ATP. You know, specifically, it
should make sense to you that if the body has a
lot ATP lying around, it should essentially be a sign to say, you know what? We have enough energy. We don't need to produce more. oxidative phosphorylation can slow down. But on the other hand, if we have a lot of ADP compared to ATP, it's a sign that the cell
is running out of ATP, and that more ADP can be
and should be phosphorylated using the electron transport chain. This is actually just
really a kind of application of Le Chatelier's Principle, which is a general chemistry principle to oxidative phosphorylation and I will actually go into
a little bit more detail about this in a second, but first, I wanna kind of touch
on a second point here, which is that it's a common end pathway for aerobic respiration. And I really make this
point because it reminds me why there is kind of no major hormonal or allosteric, remember allosteric means there is some type of enzymatic control that's being altered, but there is no major
hormonal or allosteric regulation in oxidative phosphorylation. The way I've kind of always
justified that to myself is that these are very, these forms of regulations allow us to really fine tune regulation and to make sure that
when we turn something on, we are turning it on with full certainty, but the fact that it's downstream of many of the entry points
to aerobic respiration, such as breaking down
glucose and glycolysis and the oxidation of fatty acids, means that it's probably more
important for those pathways, which they in fact do have a lot of hormonal and
allosteric regulation, but once those pathways are turned on, it's kind of just gonna keep
rolling down the pathway and it probably may not be as
important to have that level of fine-tuning in
oxidative phosphorylation. So with that in mind, let's go ahead and talk about more about how the energy levels in the body are used to regulate
oxidative phosphorylation. I've gone ahead and drawn
out a simplified diagram of the electron transport chain and I want to remind you that it's much more
complex than this, right? We know we have four protein complexes. We have ATP synthase. We have this all occurring in the inner mitochondrial membrane, but for our purposes, I just really wanted to
highlight what the main reactants and products of the electron
transport chain were. Let me go ahead and
guide you through this. We have the entry of
electron carrier molecules such as NADH, and remember, we can also be dealing
with FADH too as well, but just as an example, I'm using NADH. the NADH carries two
electron from the molecule, from the fuel such as glucose or it could be fatty acid
or some type of fuel, and it essentially gets oxidized at the electron transport chain. It releases it's electrons into the electron transport chain and becomes itself oxidized. This flow of electrons, of course, fuels the phosphorylation of ADP and a free phosphate group into ATP. Of course this is all done indirectly through a proton gradient that's formed in the
intermitochondrial membrane. Then finally, the electrons must have somewhere to go and they end up reducing oxygen. It's kind of funky to
think about two electrons reducing half an oxygen but this is just so that
the stoichiometry works out. You can see here that if we were to reduce one molecule of oxygen of course, we'd need four electrons but in any case, it reduces oxygen and it
combines with some free protons to produce some water. At this point, I want to remind you of
Le Chatelier's Principle in general chemistry which states that if you have an equilibrium, so let's say this overall reaction of the electron transport chain is our chemical reaction
that's in equilibrium, and there is some type of
alteration to this equilibrium, so let's say we have the
addition of more reactant or we take away some product, Le Chatelier's Principle essentially says that the equilibrium will re-equilibrate to counter this change. So it turns out, that this is exactly how
the electron transport chain is regulated. To make this point, let's go ahead and basically ask ourselves what would happen if we had more NADH, more ATP, more free phosphate,
or more oxygen around. Remember these are all of our reactants. Indeed, if we had more of these reactants, Le Chatelier's Principle
would essentially say that this reaction, so to say, would be pushed towards the forward direction
and we would produce more ATP. We would say that that
kind of flow of electrons through the electron chain is faster and we'd get more ATP. Now, of all three of these reactants, I just want to make a point here that practically speaking, we consider the level of
oxygen to be pretty constant. If we're breathing in and out normally, normally this is not a limiting factor that essentially alerts the
electron transport chain to go faster. I'm just gonna go ahead and erase that for practical purposes. But generally speaking, of these three, the NADH, the ADP, and
the free phosphate group, it's really the levels of ADP in a cell that are most likely to alert
the electron transport chain to produce more ATP. That's just because it's usually the limiting factor of all three. But it should make sense to
you that high levels of NADH are essentially assigned from up above from the breakdown of
glucose or fatty acids that it's time to make
more energy for the cell. Of course, we can also use that experiment for the products of the reaction. Specifically, let's say
we had elevated levels of ATP in a cell or elevated levels of the oxidized form of these
electron carrier molecules. Le Chatelier's Principle would tell us that this equilibrium
would essentially shift in the opposite direction, so the flow of electrons
through would be slower and we would produce less ATP. Of course, you know in reality, we don't really think
about electrons traveling the opposite direction down
the electron transport chain, but this is just a way to
kind of essentially signify that having higher levels
of ATP in the body, or you know, high levels of NAD+, are essentially, by Le
Chatelier's Principle, putting a break on the
electron transport chain. Just as before, the ADP levels were
more likely to alert the electron transport chain. ATP levels are kind of the limiting factor to alert the electron transport chain as compared to the NAD+ levels. That's really because the body
usually keeps NAD+ and NADH in a pretty kind of stable ratio. The body's really looking to whether there's high levels of ADP or ATP to ultimately decide and regulate how fast the electron transport chain is.