Work

Nutrients are broken down in our cells to release energy for the construction of cells. After Albert Szent-Györgyi identified several important reactions in these metabolic processes, in 1937 Hans Krebs was able to present a complete picture of an important part of metabolism—the citric acid cycle. In this process, which is cyclical and has several steps, nutrients are converted to other molecules with a large amount of chemical energy. The latter are ultimately converted into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which provides chemical energy to facilitate other biochemical processes in the cell.