Biology › Section D · Energy: metabolism, respiration, photosynthesis › Topic D.11
The Calvin cycle
The light reactions earned the money — a fast-spending stash of ATP and NADPH. The Calvin cycle is the shopping trip: it takes carbon dioxide from the air and, spending that energy, fixes the carbon into sugar. It runs day and night, in the stroma of the chloroplast, and every carbon atom in you has passed through it.
In this topic
- Light-independent, not light-independent of light
- Stage 1 — Fixation: RuBisCO's handshake
- Stage 2 — Reduction: spending ATP and NADPH
- Stage 3 — Regeneration: keeping the machine loaded
- Worked example: the carbon bookkeeping
- Worked example: what one glucose costs
- Microsecond cash, geological storage
- The great carbon loop
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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