Why Are So Many Atoms Used in Nitrogen Fixation?
“Hi I’m Brian with ericksontutoring.blogspot.com. Today we are going to discuss why so many atoms are needed in nitrogen fixation. Really what I think this means and what we are getting down to is why is nitrogen fixation so energetically costly. It requires 16 ATP molecules to fixate or convert one single gaseous nitrogen compound so two nitrogen elements or atoms to ammonia which is a usable form. So to back up a tiny bit, nitrogen is extremely abundant on Earth. It represents about 79% of the Earth’s atmosphere and it is essential to life. It is needed in a lot of different things. It is an essential component of amino acids. It forms the bases that make up DNA and RNA. it is used in a lot of different biological compounds so it is extremely important but it is not usable in the form that it is most abundant so it needs to get fixated or changed from atmospheric gaseous nitrogen which is N2 to a more usable form either ammonia or nitrate. So this is usually done by a bacteria and th
