Enduring Understanding 2A

Growth, reproduction and maintenance of the organization of living systems require free energy and matter.

Living systems require energy to maintain order, grow and reproduce. In accordance with the laws of thermodynamics, to offset entropy, energy input must exceed energy lost from and used by an organism to maintain order. Organisms use various energy-related strategies to survive; strategies include different metabolic rates, physiological changes, and variations in reproductive and offspring-raising strategies. Not only can energy deficiencies be detrimental to individual organisms, but changes in free energy availability also can affect population size and cause disruptions at the ecosystem level.

Several means to capture, use and store free energy have evolved in organisms. Cells can capture free energy through photosynthesis and chemosynthesis. Autotrophs capture free energy from the environment, including energy present in sunlight and chemical sources, whereas heterotrophs harvest free energy from carbon compounds produced by other organisms. Through a series of coordinated reaction pathways, photosynthesis traps free energy in sunlight that, in turn, is used to produce carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. Cellular respiration and fermentation use free energy available from sugars and from interconnected, multistep pathways (i.e., glycolysis, the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain) to phosphorylate ADP, producing the most common energy carrier, ATP. The free energy available in sugars can be used to drive metabolic pathways vital to cell processes. The processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration are interdependent in their reactants and products.

Organisms must exchange matter with the environment to grow, reproduce and maintain organization. The cellular surface-to-volume ratio affects a biological system’s ability to obtain resources and eliminate waste products. Water and nutrients are essential for building new molecules. Carbon dioxide moves from the environment to photosynthetic organisms where it is metabolized and incorporated into carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids or lipids. Nitrogen is essential for building nucleic acids and proteins; phosphorus is incorporated into nucleic acids, phospholipids, ATP and ADP. In aerobic organisms, oxygen serves as an electron acceptor in energy transformations.