Question

what role does pyruvic acid play in cellular respiration?

Answer 1

The pyruvic acid or pyruvate is one of the products of glycolysis. This pyruvic acid enters the krebs cycle for the aerobic respiration to continue. Since the Krebs Cycle only allows Acetyl CoA to enter its process, the pyruvic acid is transformed into Acetyl CoA before it enters the said Cycle.

Answer 2

Furthermore, without the pyruvic acid, the respiration will be incomplete because as I said, it is the pyruvic acid(transformed into Acetyl CoA) which enters the Kreb Cycle for the process to be continued.

Answer 3

pyruvate plays a mainly controlling role in glycoplysis. being the product of glycolysis (as stated above), pyruvate can do a thing called feedback inhibition. like in many other processes, the product inhibits the process to stop its own synthesis. thus, nearly all cellular processes are controlled on a molecular level.

apart from that, pyruvate is the trading center of the cell's sugar household. if you metabolize pyruvate, there is no coming back from that. you can only make fat from the energy you get (or spend it, of course). but pyruvate itself can rebuild glucose, since glycolysis is completely reversible.

those are the two main functions of pyruvate. as a third minor function, it is a central metabolism product: some amino acids and benzols get digested into pyruvate to be fed to the krebs cycle.