← 🌱 Biology · usually met in Std 7-12
Releasing the energy stored in food. It happens in every living cell, every moment, and it is not the same thing as breathing.
Cellular respiration breaks glucose down, usually with oxygen, releasing energy the cell stores as ATP — the currency it spends on everything from muscle movement to building proteins. The waste products are carbon dioxide and water. Breathing is the transport arrangement that supplies the oxygen and carries the carbon dioxide away; respiration is the chemistry at the other end of that journey.
Without enough oxygen, cells fall back on anaerobic respiration, which releases far less energy and leaves lactic acid behind — the burn in your legs during a sprint. In yeast the anaerobic route produces alcohol and carbon dioxide instead, which is why bread rises.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “Respiration” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus. Zoological Survey of India ↗India's animal life, surveyed and catalogued since 1916.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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