Hey Guys,
I'm having trouble understanding how the rate of photosynthesis and cellular respiration interlink?Could anyone clarify this?
Thanks in advance!
If you are familiar with the equations for cellular respiration and photosynthesis (quick tip: you should be) then you will notice that the products of one are more or less the reactants of the other.
This means that if both reactions were occurring at the same rate, all the products of one reaction will be utilized by the other reaction such that no net product is produced. If cellular respiration and photosynthesis were occurring at the same rate, all glucose produced from photosynthesis will be used in cellular respiration and there will be no net production.
As such, If one reaction was occurring at a greater rate than the other, there would be a net production of its products.
For this knowledge, it seems the most common application comes from reading a graph of co2 or oxygen production against light intensity. For this, if CO2 production is negative, then more CO2 is being used in photosynthesis than is being produced in cellular respiration (rate of cellular respiration is less than photosynthesis); if CO2 production is zero, then the same amount of CO2 is used in photosynthesis is being produced by cellular respiration (both reactions are occurring at same rate; and if CO2 production is positive, more CO2 is being produced by cellular respiration than is being used in photosynthesis (rate of cellular respiration is greater than that of photosynthesis.