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photorespiration. In a plant cell, the breakdown of a two-carbon compound produced by the Calvin cycle. The Calvin cycle produces the two-carbon compound, instead of its usual three-carbon product G3P, when leaf cells fix O2, instead of CO2. Photorespiration produces no sugar molecules or ATP.
The entire process converts glucose into forms of energy the cell can easily use through two enzymatic pathways. In the first pathway, the 6-carbon glucose compound is broken down to pyruvic acid, a 3-carbon compound, which has several alternate uses depending on the needs of the cell.