How does carbon get into glucose

Question

anonymous · Answer

What does carbon do when it doesn't go into glucose

barreraa · Answer

The glucose is used for two major purposes:  1)  it serves as an energy reserve for periods of darkness (don't forget that photosynthesizers, like any living things, require energy and get it through respiration processes, commonly aerobic respiration; and 2)  it is used as a major component of structure:  the cell walls that surround almost all photosynthetic cells are made of starches, huge molecules made up of hundreds, commonly thousands, of sugar molecules bound together.  This is why plant fibers are great sources of nutrition if you can break them down.  Breaking down plant fibers is chemically difficult - we humans can't, being limited to the more digestible starches put into seeds and fruits and tubers.  Plants use those starches as sources of sugar fuels, and so build them into a molecule that is much easier to break down than the starch that holds them together.