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Week 4 · Module overview

Week 4 — Cellular Energy & Protein Synthesis (overview)

Human Anatomy and Physiology I Free sample edition

Why this matters

A future physical therapist explaining why a sprint burns and a lab technician reading a gene's code both use this week's cell machinery.

In plain language

Every cell in your body runs on ATP (a small molecule the cell spends like pocket change whenever it does work). Your cells remake that ATP from food through cellular respiration (a set of steps that burns glucose with oxygen and keeps the energy). The steps happen in a fixed order and in fixed places, and the last step, which needs oxygen, makes most of the ATP. Cells also build proteins (the working molecules that pump, carry, pull, and speed up reactions) by reading a gene (a stretch of DNA that holds the recipe for one protein). This week you follow both stories in order, from the place each step happens to the job its product does.

  • Already covered: Week 1 gave you the levels of organization and homeostasis. Week 2 gave you ATP and proteins built from amino acids. Week 3 gave you the organelles and the pump that spends ATP.
  • This week: how a cell remakes ATP in three ordered, located stages, and how it reads a gene into a protein.
  • How they connect: Week 3 said "mitochondria make ATP" and "ribosomes build proteins"; this week opens those two job descriptions and shows the steps inside them.
  • Where we're going next: Week 5, Tissues, groups cells built from these proteins into the four tissue types.

Focus

Where does a cell get its energy, and how does it build the proteins that do everything?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] put the three stages of respiration in order with their places
  • [ ] explain oxygen's job and why a sprint makes lactic acid
  • [ ] transcribe and translate a gene with a codon table
  • [ ] link one changed codon to a changed protein job

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 4 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
  3. Do the A&P Lab & Inquiry (two hours), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: decode the template TAC into its mRNA codon and amino acid, and say where each step happens.

You've got this

Ask your instructor early if you get stuck.

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