Life In Its Fundamental Form | How Humans Came Into Existence? | ATP | What is ATP? | Energy | Sources Of Energy

Introduction:

Life is the race against death itself. if your systems stop, you are dead. and our universe is designed so that everyone eventually dies. This is entropy.

A cell performs various functions to stay alive, like repairing, carrying information, etc. But to do these, we need energy!


Energy:

Energy is the ability to do work. energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only be transferred from one state to another. and THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY IN THE UNIVERSE IS FIXED, AND WE DON'T KNOW WHY.

When the first living organisms on earth, that is the microbes, were born, their first and important task was to create energy. they got energy from simple chemical reactions. and finally they found the energy currency- ATP.


ATP:

ATP or adenosine triphosphate, contains 3 phosphate and an adenine molecule which is a complex hydrocarbon. it easily accepts energy and the energy can easily be utilized. when a cell needs energy to do a work it breaks the phosphate molecule to produce energy. every living organisms use ATP to do work, thus without it, life would have been difficult or impossible.


Photosynthesis:

Photosynthesis is the process of creating food/ energy using raw materials like sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. This process uses "the greatest raw source of energy- Light". It was possible after many evolutions. It is when the energy of photon which is electromagnetic energy is converted into chemical energy. this chemical energy is stored in the form of Glucose, which when required can be converted into ATP and used as energy.

So these cells/organisms create food and this attracted other organisms and they began to eat these organisms to obtain their energy and used it for themselves. It was the beginning of heterotrophic mode of Nutrition.


The Cells of other organisms:

Now this process continued, but... once upon a time a cell ate another cell but it did not eat it, instead they became one. the swallowed cell focused on energy production whereas the host cell focused on survival. this swallowed cell was Mitochondria. this host cell became the mother cell for all organisms around us.

The mitochondria produced a lot of energy. It converted the glucose into ATP using Oxygen and produced by-products like carbon dioxide, water and heat (Body Heat). This meant that the cell has a lot of energy which could be used for evolving and this formed multicellular organisms, like whales, rats, fish, etc.

we humans get usable energy from our cells and if this process stops, we die. We need a lot of energy for surviving.

~But now comes a question, why can't we store ATP and use it in times of shortage? 

This is because ATP contains less energy than glucose and it is more heavier than Glucose thus ATP is used as soon as it is produced and it is not possible to store it.


And that's all for today, we will see about the formation of ATP in the next post, so, have a good day!

~Thank You~

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