Re: who is the guy who come up the equation of cellular respiration?

Hello Carol,

Not a very simple answer to that seemingly simple question...

Aerobic oxydation of glucose does not fall from heaven, and the reaction 
does not occur on its own. (Do you still have sugar in your sugar bowl 
after it was exposed to air?) (hmmm... let me check...YES!)

Allright, let's be serious.

The reaction comes first from the degradation of glucose to form 2 
pyruvates molecules. 
(the complete pathway of glycolysis was characterized by the year 1940 
mainly by Gustav Embden, Otto Meyerhof and Jacob Parnas but others 
contributed also to this work such as Carl and Gerti Cori, Carl Neuberg, 
Robert Robinson and Otto Warburg)

These pyruvates are then used to generate 10 NADH and 2 FADH2 molecules 
per glucose through the citric acid cycle 
(also called the Krebs Cycle, because he was the first to propose this 
cycle in 1937.  He based his researches on the work of Albert Szent-
Gyorgyi and those of Carl Martins and Franz Knoops.  It was not until 1951 
with the works of Severo Ochoa and Feodor Lynen as well as those of Nathan 
Kaplan and Fritz Lipmann in 1945 that the entire cycle was 
characterized.)  
The 10 NADH and 2 FADH2 are then used to drive the electron-transfer 
process that drives oxydative phosphorylation.

In other terms, these molecules are allowing the mitochondria to use 
differences in potential to generate energy (much like a battery!) and use 
this energy to phosphorylate ADP to form ATP.
(This was discovered by many scientists that each studied a small portion 
of these very (thrust me!) complex reactions and is a subject that is 
still studied today)
 
BUT!  An interesting finding is that Armand Séguin and Antoine Lavoisier 
wrote in 1789(!):
"...in general, respiration is nothing but a slow combustion of carbon and 
hydrogen, which is entirely similar to that which occurs in a lamp or 
lighted candles, and that, from this point of view, animals that respire 
are true combustible bodies that burn and consume themselves."

Lavoisier had demonstrated by this time that animals consume oxygen and 
generate carbon dioxide.  

As you can see, this equation comes from a long way! (and a lot of work!)  

For more details (do you have to?) look it up in any basic metabolism or 
biochemistry book.  This pathway is one of the first thing a biochemist 
learns at school.

Ciao!

Mike

Reference : Voet D., Voet J.G.,Biochemistry, John Wiley and Sons, (1990), 
1223pp. (mainly chapters 16, 19 and 20)