Why do prokaryotes do glycolysis but not continue on with the remaining steps in cellular respiration?

Question

Why do prokaryotes do glycolysis but not continue on with the remaining steps in cellular respiration?

Answer 1

Most prokaryotes do in fact do further cellular respiration. The chemistry involved is so radically different that most bio coursework doesn't touch on it until the 3rd or 4th year of college. For example, there are microbes that 'breathe' things like sulfer and nitrate. The cells don't usually mitochondria, so it's done in an anatomically different way too.

Of course, some microbes do in fact only do glycolysis and fermentation. They rely on having a lot of food available to make up for all that gets wasted in not burning it down to carbon dioxide

Answer 2

Glycolysis only produces a small amount of ATP, but for lower levels of biological organization, such as prokaryotes, the small amount of ATP produced is sufficient.

However, cellular respiration is required by multicellular eukaryotes because of the greater need for ATP and chemical potential energy stored in NADH and FADH2.