An acceptor is a substance that plays an important role in biochemical oxidation processes. Oxidation is one of the key processes necessary for the life of all organisms. It occurs by transferring electrons from one substance to another. During this process, energy is generated, which is then used for various biological processes.
However, not all substrates with reduced concentrations are able to directly participate in the oxidation process. In order to speed up this process, an acceptor is used. The acceptor accepts additional hydrogen ions, which facilitates the oxidation of the substrate and increases the productivity of the process.
Typically, acceptors are organic molecules such as NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), NADP+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate), FAD (flavin adenine dinucleotide), etc. They can accept electrons and hydrogen ions from other molecules and transfer them further in the oxidation chain. One of the best known examples of an acceptor is the oxygen molecule, which is the final acceptor in the oxidation and phosphorylation chain.
Acceptors play an important role not only in biochemical processes, but also in industry. For example, they are used in biodiesel production, where scavengers help speed up the process of oil oxidation and biodiesel production.
In conclusion, scavengers are important substances that facilitate the oxidation process and increase the productivity of biochemical processes. They are widely used not only in biology, but also in other branches of science and industry.
In biochemical processes, AC takes part in all types of enzymatic reactions, oxidizing the product-enzyme complex in non-selective aerobic enzymes and donating some electrons to the electron transport chain and O2 in selective aerobes. Thus, the acceptor action facilitates the process of enzymatic oxidation of substrates when their concentration is insufficient, ensuring the conversion of substrates into reaction products. In addition to the fact that the substrate for these enzymes is a coenzyme (NAD or NADP), another coenzyme is necessarily added to them - an electron acceptor. The functional role of acceptors is due to the fact that during oxidation of the substrate or enzymatic dehydrogenation, they act as donors of electrons or protons, and sometimes both at the same time. Coenzymes and electron acceptors differ in their chemical nature and perform different catalytic functions on enzyme subunits. Let's look at this issue in a little more detail. In general, for the transfer of a large number of atoms through a membrane, a total change in membrane potential of at least 120-150 mV is required, and for the transport of one equivalent of hydrophilic amino acids, a sufficient value of excitation potential is a change of 4