Free Essay About Photosynthesis

After a long journey from the hot sun, I was really glad to have reached such a calm and beautiful place full of trees. And so I settle on leaf, lay along the leaf and begin my rest – the best feeling I’d had in a long time. All of a sudden, I was captured by the leaf and transported through this thick transparent cuticle, then across the epidermis before we got to the palisade mesoderm. There, I was moved to these green pigment (chlorophyll) on the surface of the chloroplasts. The chlorophyll ushered me into the chloroplast. In the chloroplast, I was captured by one enzyme which moved me to another enzyme. As a result, I got split into a high energy electron and a proton. The thylakoid membrane captured me as an electron with the help of enzymes. It transferred me to a hydrogen ion on the other side of the membrane. I joined the hydrogen ion to form a hydrogen atom. As I left the thylakoid membrane, I was told that more hydrogen ions like myself, would be replaced from water by the aid of a water splitting enzyme. The hydrogen atom moved to the thylakoid sac where an enzyme removed me from the atom, leaving behind the hydrogen ion. I inquired why this had happened, and was informed that the hydrogen ion was a carrier molecule whose job was to move me into the thylakoid sac. The hydrogen ion had to leave the sac through the production of ATP with the help of an enzyme. At the same time, another enzyme joined me to another hydrogen ion and we were moved to an NADP molecule, which was also a carrier molecule. The NADP molecule moved us to the stroma in the form of a hydrogen atom.
The stroma was located just outside of the thylakoid sac. There, I met and made new friends. I met 3 carbon dioxide molecules who ahd got in through the stroma. There were enzymes present in the stroma, five to be precise. We were informed that we would undergo the Calvin Cycle to transform us into glucose. The first enzyme took the three carbon dioxide molecules and attached them to three five-carbon sugars. Three six-carbon sugars was produced and moved to the second enzyme which changed their order of arrangement to six three-carbon sugars. In this process, an oxygen molecule was left out and had to exit the leaf. It was given the direction to the stoma and left. The hydrogen ion and I were added to the six sugars by the third enzyme and then one of the sugars was discarded. The fourth enzyme rearranged the five three-carbon sugars, which I had become part of, to three five-carbon sugars. ATP was added to the sugars by the fifth enzyme to form glucose.
Inside glucose, I was transported to the cytoplasm of the cell where I would be broken down to produce energy for the cell in the form of ATP. The first process we underwent was glycolysis, which transformed us into three five-carbon molecule. We moved into the mitochondria to undergo the Krebs cycle. The membrane of the mitochondria was folded and had many enzymes. Carbon dioxide was produced in the process. We left the Krebs cycle as hydrogen atoms on carrier molecules – NADP, FAD and NAD. We moved to the cristae of the mitochondria, which had many enzymes forming the electron transport chain. With the help of oxygen, we passed through the chain and formed ATP, which would be our new home for some time. The hydrogen and oxygen in the chain combined to form water.