| The diagram shows that sugars (glucose) are
burned in two ways. Glucose, a sugar with 6 carbon atoms gets
broken down to a 3-carbon molecule (pyruvic acid) in
glycolysis. This
releases a little energy, but if oxygen is present, the pyruvic
acid can then be burned to release a great deal of energy, with
carbon dioxide and water being produced as waste products.
In the presence of oxygen, the energy is
extracted in a cycle of reactions wherein the first molecule in
the cycle gets re-built at the end of the cycle. We call this
the "Krebs' cycle."
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