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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Aug 28.
Published in final edited form as: Chem Rev. 2017 Dec 22;118(4):1460–1494. doi: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.7b00510

Figure 3.

Figure 3

An overview of cellular glucose metabolism. The coupled pathways of glycolysis, TCA cycle, and electron transport down the membrane respiratory chain summarize removal of 24 electrons from each glucose molecule and ~30 ATP molecules accumulated for each four electron reduction of O2. A second major flux of glucose carbons is via the pentose phosphate pathway, yielding 2 equivalents of NADPH used for fatty acid biosynthesis and to make D-ribose-5-P for nucleic acid biosynthesis. The diagram also notes that complete oxidation of the predominant C16 fatty acyl-CoA, palmityl-CoA to 8 molecules of acetyl-CoA that are run through the TCA cycle and respiratory chain yields ~108 ATPs, emphasizing that saturated fatty acyl chains are energy storage molecules.