These 10 animal facts will amaze you. The face of farming and agriculture has changed drastically over the past 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, over 70% of the population of the United States lived and worked on farms, but by 2008, the figure had dropped to less that 3%.
During this process, glucose from food is broken down into carbon dioxide and water, and energy is released. The process of releasing energy from food is called respiration, or cellular respiration as it is a series of steps that take place within living cells. It is important to not confuse respiration, or oxidizing glucose, with breathing.
Glycolysis is the major pathway of glucose metabolism and occurs in the cytosol of all cells. It can occur aerobically or anaerobically depending on whether oxygen is available. This is clinically significant because oxidation of glucose under aerobic conditions results in 32 mol of ATP per mol of glucose. However, under anaerobic conditions, only 2 mol of ATP can be produced. Aerobic glycolysis occurs in 2 steps. The first occurs in the cytosol and involves the conversion of glucose to pyruvate with resultant production of NADH. This process alone generates 2 molecules of ATP.