Talk:Respiratory quotient

With the resolution of the uncited source, does anyone see a reason that the banner at the top of the page for additional citations should not be removed? --Cwelsh3 (talk) 01:22, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I think you are right. The article has been massively improved since May 2011 with a lot of substantial references added. So I removed the banner. --J.Ammon (talk) 13:22, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Lay Down Fat
I am considering deleting the sentence detailing how a respiratory quotient greater than 1 could indicate a state of preparing for hibernation, as I was not able to find the source for it anywhere, although if anyone has that source I would happily look it over.--Cwelsh3 (talk) 19:42, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Eliminated CO2
The change introduced by 19:08, 13 March 2009 128.143.65.71 is dubious. What is meant by "eliminated CO2"? Respiration doesn't "eliminate" any CO2.


 * It's common terminology. Biologists and doctors will frequently talk about 'eliminating waste' for removing it from the body. Mokele (talk) 11:44, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this is more common for medical doctors. I am a biologist working with fermentor systems and we use RQ. In this case, and I think in general, "eliminated" makes no sense at all. It is rather confusing terminology (not untypical for medical science ;) ). I have added a short sentence to the main page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.52.149.87 (talk) 10:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)


 * "Eliminated" actually makes much more sense than "produced" for a multicellular organism. While your organisms just excrete the CO2 into your system (to be vented or whatever by you), in a multicellular organism, CO2 produced at the cellular level is not necessarily eliminated in the lungs (it can be retained in the blood as bicarbonate, either purposefully in order to regulate blood pH or accidentally due to limits of respiratory elimination being lower than production rate).  Elimination works for both unicellular and multicellular systems, while "produce" does not, so I prefer the former. Mokele (talk) 13:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Aren't you just confirming that there is not elimination of CO2 at all, in your statement? It still doesn't make sense to me. Neither cellular nor multicellular respiration "eliminate" any CO2 - I guess this refers to practical measurements in medical context (outhaled CO2) - I am sorry, it just seems like a big terminology failure to me. But I am OK with the current clarification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.52.149.87 (talk) 19:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

RQ>1.0 indicates fat "lay-down"?
In the article, the following is said, "A mixed diet of fat and carbohydrate results in an average value between these numbers. An RQ may rise above 1.0 for an organism burning carbohydrate to produce or "lay down" fat (for example, a bear preparing for hibernation)." However, the laying down of body fat would occur only due to an excessive consumption and absorption of calories. The calories consumed can come from either protein, fat or carbohydrate, and it doesn't matter; an excess of calories results in fat gain. What is this section of the article really trying to say? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.143.68.247 (talk) 06:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I propose merging Respiratory exchange ratio into Respiratory ratio. I think the content in Respiratory exchange ratio can easily be explained in the context of Respiratory ratio, and a merge would not cause any article-size or weighting problems in Respiratory ratio. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I see no obvious problems. I assume you would undertake the merge? However I also see that Respiratory ratio is a redirect to Respiratory quotient and there is currently no proposal to move Respiratory quotient to Respiratory ratio. What are your intentions about that? This would be a merge with redirect. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 09:41, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Support the proposal to merge Respiratory exchange ratio into (what is now) Respiratory quotient, which seems to be the more commonly used term, and is the better-developed page. Klbrain (talk) 10:30, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
 *  Support  as per Klbrain. Tom (LT) (talk) 05:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)