What does respire means? Respire is the exchange of gases to break down the food material into the simplest form to produce energy from it, to work in daily life. The the food material that is taken in during the process of Nutrition is used in cell to provide energy for various life processes. Diverse organisms use different ways, some use oxygen and some do not and some use other pathways to breakdown those food particles into glucose, into pyruvate to provide energy for the life processes. In all the cases the first step is breakdown of glucose this process takes place in cytoplasm.

There are two type of respiration anaerobic and aerobic respiration.

Aerobic respiration= Breakdown of pyruvate using oxygen takes place in the mitochondria which gives energy the body to work.

Anaerobic respiration= Pyruvate may be converted into ethanol and carbon dioxide. This process take place in yeast during fermentation since this process is done in the absence of oxygen.

We can see that in this both respiration some kind of gas is used or involved in it, which produce components, which provide energy to the body to work. That’s why it is important to respire for a living organism to live.