Welcome to another new day for Biology Tips Daily, offering tips and tricks to help you ease into the biology mastery.
Today's topic is about photosynthesis. Plants photosynthesize so they don't need to respire?
If autotrophs ("self-feeders"), like plants, make their own food, why do they need to respire? After all heterotrophs ("other feeders"), like animals, don't need to photosynthesize, they just need to respire.
Let's think about this carefully by asking two questions: What's the point of photosynthesis? What's the point of cellular respiration?
Plants can do something that you and I can't. They are actually superior (well...at least different) to us in some respects. They can make their own food. Unlike animals, such as you and us, plants don't have to run around and chase down food and then kill it. Have you ever observed a plant pick up its roots and sprint after a meal? Probably not.
Plants photosynthesize. The point of photosynthesis is to make carbohydrates. That's plant food.
Animals, on the other hand, are natural born killers (compared to plants!). They must find prey and kill it, unless they find something already dead. Hey that's what you do when you go grocery shopping. You find dead stuff to eat. Never thought of it that way, did you?
Now that we've established the means by which autotrophs like plants and heterotrophs like animals get food, what do they do with food once they've made it or captured it?
This brings us to the second question. What's the point of cellular respiration?
Cellular respiration, you may recall, is a process whereby chemical energy is extracted from food and stored in a form more easily used by cells - as chemical energy in the molecule ATP. The chemical energy stored in ATP is then used to drive many of the important metabolic processes that keep you and other critters alive. No ATP, no life.
So if plants make their own food by photosynthesis and animals capture their food, don't they both have to extract energy from their food to drive the rest of their metabolic processes? After all, where do plants and animals get the energy to grow and reproduce? Of course, they have to extract that energy from their food.
That's the point of respiration, isn't it? Sure. That means plants must not only photosynthesize to get their food, they must also extract energy from the food by means of cellular respiration. Plants need to do both processes to survive.
Until then, stay tuned for more biology tips.
Seize the Day!
Dr. Wayne Huang
"The Rapid Learning Coach"
BioTips@RapidLearningCener.com
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