Metabolic acidosis and the importance of balanced equations

Balancing biochemical equations for both mass and charge in metabolic networks is critical but unfortunately ignored too often. Failure to do so, for example, results in a common misconception about the origin of protons during lactic fermentation. Lactate, rather than lactic acid, is produced by glycolysis, and its production is a mechanism for alleviating intracellular acidosis due to glycolysis. This error is at the core of some recent papers, and is often ambiguous in biochemistry textbooks.