{"id":3662,"date":"2025-12-08T16:47:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2025-12-08T16:47:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:47:21","slug":"reflection-2-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/12\/08\/reflection-2-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection #2: ETC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As an EMT, I have been taught to give oxygen to patients experiencing a wide range of problems, from respiratory issues like COPD and asthma, to traumatic injuries from car crashes or falls. And in my prior biology courses, I had learned the chemical equation for cellular respiration: C6H12O6 + 6 O2 -&gt; 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + Energy. However, I had not learned why specifically oxygen is needed for life and how\/where it is used.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, I have learned that oxygen is consumed at complex 4 of the electron transport chain. Here, it is reduced to water, while protons are pumped against their gradient into the intermembrane space of the mitochondria. The proton gradient is then used by ATP synthase to produce ATP.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Learning about the electron transport chain in detail has also allowed me to understand how cyanide poisoning works. Cyanide binds to complex 4, preventing the reduction of oxygen (and the subsequent production of ATP). This explains why patients who have inhaled cyanide still have a high blood oxygen concentration, since it is unable to be used for ATP production. It has been interesting to learn in depth the biochemistry behind the conditions taught in my EMT training.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an EMT, I have been taught to give oxygen to patients experiencing a wide range of problems, from respiratory issues like COPD and asthma, to traumatic injuries from car crashes or falls. And in my prior biology courses, I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/12\/08\/reflection-2-etc\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17683,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[349081],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3663,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions\/3663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}