In this video, we're going to take a look at alcohol fermentation. Here, this process is by certain bacteria and yeast that convert pyruvate to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Pyruvate to ethanol happens by a 2-step process. In these processes, we're going to say 1 carbon atom is lost as carbon dioxide. If we take a look here at the first step, we have pyruvate here; we've highlighted the carboxyl group of pyruvate. We use pyruvate decarboxylase because decarboxylation is occurring. Remember, decarboxylation means that we're losing CO2. Losing CO2 creates an aldehyde group. And because this is 1 to 2 carbons long, this is ethanol. Remember, aldehydes end with "al".
In step 2, once we've created our ethanol, we're going to say 1 NADH is oxidized to 1 NAD+. Here, we'd say that our ethanol is going to be converted into ethanol. In this, our aldehyde group is reduced into an alcohol group, so we're creating an alcohol. We'd say that this is an alcohol dehydrogenase. So when it comes to our alcohol fermentation, this is the 2-step process that we would employ in order to change pyruvate first into ethanol and then from ethanol to ethanol.
