It also provides us a way to synthesize pento sugars, for instance, ribo sugars that we commonly use to synthesize other important biochemical molecules such as DNA molecules, RNA molecules, coenzyme A molecules, ATP molecules, NADH molecules, as well as fad molecules. And the final important role of the pentose phosphate pathway is that it allows us a synthesis and the breakdown of the less common four carbon and seven carbon sugars. Now, as we'll discuss in much more detail in the lectures to come, we can break down the pentosphosphate pathway into two phases or two stages. The first phase is known as the oxidation phase or the oxidative phase. In this phase, what we basically do is we essentially oxidize glucose molecules. More specifically, we oxidized glucose phosphate molecules into ribose five phosphate molecules.