ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Matter and Energy Transformation

Theme

Better BiochemistryTansey et al. (2013) have described the five core concepts in biochemistry and molecular biology. These are the fundamental concepts that all biochemistry instructors must teach and all biochemistry students must understand.

The five core concept categories are:

1. evolution [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Evolution ]
2. matter and energy transformation [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Matter and Energy Transformation]
3. homeostasis [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Homeostasis]
4. biological information [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Biological Information]
5. macromolecular structure and function [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Molecular Structure and Function]

I like the idea of teaching biochemistry from a concept-driven perspective and I like the five categories. However, I was not too pleased with the description of the core concept of evolution [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Evolution]. It's one thing to identify the main categories but you also have to get the concepts right if you are going to advocate teaching them!

Let's see how they do with the second core concept.

Matter and Energy Transformation

The Many Forms of Energy Involved in Biological Processes

The energetics of a biological system or process—be it an ecosystem, an organism, a cell, a biochemical reaction—conforms to and is understood in terms of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. Biological systems capture and process energy from the environment in many forms including that emanating directly from the sun (photons through photosynthesis), heat from the environment (kinetic energy), and energy rich compounds produced by geothermal processes (e.g. sulfur compounds) or other organisms (e.g. carbohydrates). Energy from all sources is chemically converted into useful chemical and physical work in a controlled and regulated fashion. The potential
energy stored in chemical bonds can used to generate motion, light, heat, and electrochemical gradients; likewise, electrochemical gradients can be used to generate motion and new chemical bonds. The input of energy from the environment allows living systems to exist in a state of nonequilibrium with their environment. The discussion of energy and matter conversions in biological systems makes use of the physical concept of changes in Gibbs free energy, or ΔG.

I think we can all agree that a basic understanding of thermodynamics is an important core concept. However, I would have worded this paragraph somewhat differently.

First, I would have mentioned that organisms can capture energy from simple inorganic compounds such as H₂ or those containing Fe²⁺. These are energy sources for many chemoautrophic bacteria. If you are teaching biochemistry from an evolutionary perspective, it's important that students understand how these organisms capture energy. That's the process that is most like the mechanism found in the earliest living cells.¹

Second, I would have put more emphasis on using captured energy in biosynthesis pathways. The paragraph mentions that energy can be used to generate new chemical bonds but that doesn't convey the importance of the process. Think about bacterial cells growing and dividing in the ocean or plants growing from a single seed. Most of the energy goes into making proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates.

Third, I would drop the reference to cells being in "a state of nonequilibrium with their environment." That conceptt is covered under "homeostasis."

Catalysis

Biologically relevant energy and matter interconversions do not occur rapidly enough (often by many orders of magnitude) to support life. In living systems, biological catalysts called enzymes facilitate these reactions. Enzymes are macromolecules, usually proteins or RNA molecules with a catalytic function. Enzymes do not alter reaction equilibria; instead, they lower the activation barrier of a particular reaction so that reactions proceed much more rapidly. The presence of powerful enzymatic catalysts is one of the key conditions for life itself.

Description of the rates of enzymatic reactions represents the subdiscipline enzyme kinetics. Key concepts of kinetics, including the definitions of the terms v_o, V_max, K_m, and k_cat, constitute a common language for biochemists and molecular biologists in discussing the properties of enzymes.

Students should be able to apply their knowledge of basic chemical thermodynamics to biologically catalyzed systems, quantitatively model how these reactions occur, and calculate kinetic parameters from experimental data.

This is pretty good. I would only add that there are some fundamental concepts of enzyme mechanisms that need to be covered. The idea of a transition state is important. I put a lot of emphasis on oxidation-reduction reactions as a core concept in biochemistry.

Coupling Exergonic and Endergonic Processes

Biochemical systems couple energetically unfavorable reactions with energetically favorable reactions to allow for a wider variety of reactions to proceed.

Students should be able to discuss the concept of Gibbs free energy, and how to apply it to chemical transformations, be able to identify which steps of metabolic pathways are exergonic and which are endergonic and relate the energetics of the reactions to each other.

I have a problem with this section. I don't think that the concepts of "exergonic" and "endergonic" processes are very important in biochemistry and I don't use them in my textbook. They're not found in many other textbooks, either. Also, the idea of "coupled" reactions is very poorly taught in biochemistry courses. It's almost never true that enzymes simply link up two independent reactions, one of which is "favorable" and the other "unfavorable." What usually happens is that a completely new reaction is catalyzed. For example, ATP is not hydrolyzed but, instead, a group transfer reaction is created. This important concept is covered in the next section but the authors do not appear to have grasped its significance.

Not only that, what does it mean to say that a reaction is "energetically unfavorable"? Usually this refers to the standard Gibbs free energy (ΔG°′) but one of the most important concepts in biochemistry is the difference between the standard Gibbs free energy change and the actual Gibbs free energy change (ΔG) inside the cell. In most cases ΔG = 0.

It's true that there are potential "endergonic" reactions occurring inside cells. Think about ATP hydrolysis, for example. The concentration of ATP is maintained at a high level relative to ADP and P_i so the Gibbs free energy change in the direction of hydrolysis is actually more negative that even the standard Gibbs free energy change. What this means is the the reverse reaction is extremely "endergonic."

However, it is simply not true that there are steps in metabolic pathways that are "endergonic" as the authors state. That statement reflects a profound misunderstanding of a fundamental concept in biochemistry. There will not be any flux in the "forward" direction of a metabolic pathway as long as even one reaction is "endergonic." All reactions have to be near-equilibrium reactions or reactions with a negative ΔG that's maintained because the enzyme activity is regulated to prevent the reaction from reaching equilibrium.

The important concept is "flux" or flow of metabolites in one direction along a metabolic pathway. There are many pathways where flux can occur in either direction as in the central part of the gluconeogenesis/glycolysis pathway or the citric acid cycle. Students need to understand what controls flux in one direction or another. They should know that, like water, metabolic flux cannot flow uphill.

The Nature of Biological Energy

In biological systems, chemical energy is stored in molecules with high group transfer potential or strongly negative free energy of hydrolysis or decomposition. These molecules, particularly ATP, provide the free energy to drive otherwise unfavorable biochemical reactions or processes in tightly coupled and highly controlled fashion. Most frequently, the free energy needed for a process or metabolic pathway is provided by group transfer rather than by hydrolysis. In this way, efficient energy transfer is optimized, while inefficient energy transfer to the environment (in the form of heat for example) is minimized.

Students should be able to show how reactions that proceed with large negative changes in free energy can be used to render other biochemical processes more favorable.

The essence of these statements is correct but it is not explained very well. The important concept is not that you "couple" a "favorable" reaction like ATP hydrolysis to an "unfavorable" reaction like synthesis of glutamine from glutamate and ammonia (ΔG°′ = +14 kJ mol^-1).

The point is that the enzyme (glutamine synthetase) catalzyes a completely different reaction—a phosphoryl group transfer reaction—with a negative standard Gibbs free energy change of ΔG°′ = −18 kJ mol^-1.

[see Moran et al. (2011): Introduction to Metabolism]
If there were an enzyme that catalyzed the first reaction involving only glutamate and ammonia then this reaction could easily occur inside the cell in spite of the positive ΔG°′. It would be a near-equilibrium reaction with steady-state equilibrium concentrations of glutamate that were very much higher than the concentration of glutamine.

It's likely that the concentration of glutamine would then be too low to support all the reactions that require it. That's why the reaction involving ATP is more useful. It means that the steady-state concentration of glutamine can be maintained a much higher concentration. This requires regulation of glutamine synthetase in order to prevent the reaction from reaching equilibrium.

It seems to me that the authors (Tansey et al.) have not thought about the fundamental core concepts. They are promoting widespread misconceptions about thermodynamics and metabolism and they are missing some important concepts. I've already mentioned flux. The other missing concept is oxidation-reduction reactions (electron transfer) and the importance of reduction potentials. NADH, NADPH, and QH₂ are important energy currencies inside the cell—just as important as ATP.

There's something seriously wrong with biochemistry teaching if ASBMB educators can't even correctly explain foundational concepts like "evolution" and "matter and energy transformation."

---

1. I believe that all introductory biochemistry students should be able to explain where chemoautrophs get their energy. If they can't do it, they haven't been taught the fundamental concepts.

Tansey, J.T., Baird, T., Cox, M.M., Fox, K.M., Knight, J., Sears, D. and Bell, E. (2013) Foundational concepts and underlying theories for majors in “biochemistry and molecular biology”. Biochem. Mol. Biol. Educ., 41:289–296. [doi: 10.1002/bmb.20727]