F4 Biology - Double Membrane Organelles Part 1
Hello kids! I'm going to explain the stuffs on this flashcard set further, in a way I understand them.
1. Mitochondria
Remember mitochondria? The oval teeth thing with double membrane? Yeah, imagine it as the lungs of your cells. During respiration, food oxidation occurs, yes? You know, the one where oxygen + glucose becomes carbon dioxide + energy? This little oval teeth thing is responsible for that. So here, all the food that gets absorbed are used to produce Adenosine Triphosphate, or ATP as the lazy-arses call them, the instant source of energy for the cells. Therefore, mitochondria are abundant in the cells that require lots of energy! For example, the cell we all once used to be, sperm cell! There's a lot of mitochondria in a sperm cell's midpiece. You need energy to move, right? Similarly, very little mitochondria can be found in ovums. Other easy examples would be your muscle cells and the meristematic cells in plants where energy is needed for rapid cell division.
2. Chloroplast
Back in the lower form, we learnt that chloroplasts are only found in plants because plants don't have teeth to eat, yes? (Dude if they do, imagine eating tooth-clad broccoli. TREES WITH TEETH. HOW COOL IS THAT) Therefore, this lens-shaped organelle with double membrane produce their own food through photosynthesis. How do they do this, you ask? Inside these chloroplasts there's this green pigment called chlorophyll that acts as a sunlight sponge. It traps the light energy from the sun and then convert it into chemical energy aka food for plants. Imagine this. You have a soapy sponge right? You soak it in a pail of water for a while and then squeeze it out somewhere else. You get soapy water, yes? So, since they need sunlight for food, chloroplasts can be found in large numbers in the palisade mesophyll cells, the outermost layer of a plant's epidermis. Now you see that chlorophyll is green pigment, right? Hence, the leaves are green because there's an abundance of the chloroplast on the leaves!
Blah I'm babbling. I'll be back for part 2 very soon! - DN