Cellular respiration and chemiosmotic theory
Respiración celular y teoría quimiosmótica
- Date
- 1925-1961 · confidence high
- Place
- Berlin (Warburg) / Edinburgh and Bodmin (Mitchell)
- Credited to
- Otto Warburg (respiratory enzyme), Peter Mitchell (chemiosmosis, 1961)
- People
- 👤 Otto Heinrich Warburg1883–1970👤 Peter Mitchell
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Warburg identified the respiratory enzyme (cytochrome oxidase); Mitchell proposed that ATP synthesis is coupled to a proton gradient across the mitochondrial membrane, a revolutionary idea confirmed in the 1970s.
Mitchell received the Nobel Prize in 1978 after years of scepticism.
What it led to
- bioenergetics
- understanding of photosynthesis and the mitochondrion
- mitochondrial diseases
- membrane biology