Which process involves breaking down glucose to produce energy?

The process that specifically involves breaking down glucose to produce energy is glycolysis. Glycolysis is the first step in the metabolic pathway of cellular respiration, where a single molecule of glucose (a six-carbon sugar) is enzymatically converted into two molecules of pyruvate (a three-carbon compound). During this process, a small amount of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is the energy currency of the cell, is generated along with NADH, which is used in later stages of cellular respiration to produce more ATP.

On the other hand, photosynthesis, while it involves energy transformation, is primarily focused on converting light energy into chemical energy in the form of glucose, rather than breaking down glucose. Transcription and translation are processes related to protein synthesis, where transcription involves creating messenger RNA from a DNA template, and translation involves assembling amino acids into proteins based on the sequence of nucleotides in the mRNA. These processes do not directly involve the breakdown of glucose for energy production.