The second reason why the pentosphosphate pathway is important is because it gives us a way to generate reducing agent molecules, molecules we call NADPH, which stands for the reduced version of nicotine amide adenineucleotide phosphate. Now, this molecule is used in biosynthetic processes such as the building of fatty acids, the building of cholesterol molecules, the building of nucleotide molecules, and so forth. We also use the NADPH molecules in different detoxification processes that take place inside our cells. So in this lecture, I'd like to focus on the first phase of the pentose phosphate pathway and recall that the first phase of this pentose phosphate pathway is the oxidative phase. This is where we actually oxidize glucose. We transform it into a pentose molecule, as we'll see in just a moment.