Glycolysis

Glycolysis is a ten-reaction pathway that breaks one glucose molecule into two pyruvate molecules, producing ATP and NADH. It occurs in the cytosol and can function without oxygen.

Hexokinase: An enzyme that transfers a phosphate group from ATP to glucose or another hexose. It traps glucose in the cell and begins glycolysis by spending ATP.
Glucose: A six-carbon monosaccharide that serves as a major energy source for cells. It supplies the six-carbon starting material that glycolysis splits.
Lactate fermentation: A metabolic process that converts pyruvate to lactate while regenerating NAD+ from NADH. It sustains glycolysis when mitochondrial oxidation cannot regenerate NAD+ quickly enough.
Gluconeogenesis: The synthesis of glucose from non-carbohydrate precursors such as lactate, glycerol, and amino acids. It reverses much of glycolysis’s chemistry but uses different reactions at irreversible steps.
Phosphofructokinase-1: An enzyme that converts fructose 6-phosphate to fructose 1,6-bisphosphate using ATP. Its regulated reaction commits much of the incoming sugar to glycolysis.
Pyruvate: A three-carbon molecule produced at the end of glycolysis and used in several metabolic pathways. Two pyruvate molecules are the pathway’s principal carbon-containing products.
Cori cycle: A metabolic cycle in which lactate from muscle or other tissues is converted to glucose by the liver. It returns carbon from anaerobic glycolysis to glucose-producing tissues.
Oxidative phosphorylation: ATP production driven by electron transport and a proton gradient across a membrane. It produces far more ATP per glucose overall, but depends on respiratory electron transport.
Aldolase: An enzyme that cleaves fructose 1,6-bisphosphate into two three-carbon phosphate molecules. This cleavage divides the six-carbon sugar into glycolysis’s two parallel branches.
Adenosine triphosphate: A nucleotide that stores and transfers usable chemical energy in cells. Glycolysis spends ATP early and produces more ATP later.

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