Biological molecules

Question 1

What is a monosaccharide carbohydrate?

Answer 1

Monosaccharides or simple sugars contain one simple sugar unit. They are the building blocs of more complex sugars and starches. Two that are common are pentoses and hexoses.

Question 2

What is a pentose?

Answer 2

5 carbon sugars (represented by a 5-sided ring) and include ribose (found in ribonucleic acid or RNA) and deoxyribose (found in deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA)

Question 3

What is a hexose?

Answer 3

6 carbon sugars (represented by a 6-sided ring) and include glucose, fructose and galactose found in the diet

Question 4

give the enzyme and products of the substrate sucrose

Answer 4

enzyme = sucrase
products = glucose + fructose

Question 5

give the enzyme and products of the substrate lactose

Answer 5

enzyme = lactase
products = glucose + galactose

Question 6

give the enzyme and products of the substrate maltose

Answer 6

enzyme = maltase
products = glucose + glucose

Question 7

What is the formula of glucose, fructose and galactose?

Answer 7

C6H12O6

Question 8

What is a polysaccharide?

Answer 8

A polysaccharide means many sugar units. They are very large molecules formed from hundreds of glucose molecules linked together. Polysaccharides include starch, glycogen and cellulose.

Question 9

What is a polymer?

Answer 9

A very large molecule made up of lots of small repeated units.

Question 10

What is a protein?

Answer 10

Proteins are polymers. The basic units of proteins are amino acids. If there are more than 50 amino acids in a chain it is a protein

Question 11

What is a protease?

Answer 11

Proteases break proteins into peptides. peptides are then broken down into amino acids by enzymes called peptidases

Question 12

How do amino acids interact with the body?

Answer 12

Amino acids are small enough to be absorbed from the intestine into the blood, and can then be carried around the body. Amino acids are taken from the blood into the cells where they are used as raw materials for protein synthesis by the cell

Question 13

What must proteins be broken down into before absorption (from the intestines into the blood)

Answer 13

amino acids - there are 20 of these

Question 14

What are the enzymes which digest proteins called?

Answer 14

Proteases

Question 15

What is an enzyme?

Answer 15

a biological catalyst and is always a protein. enzymes speed up the chemical reaction but it not used up/destroyed in the process

Question 16

What determines protein structure?

Answer 16

The arrangement and number of amino acids

Question 17

Primary structure of proteins

Answer 17

refers to the sequence of amino acids in the chain

Question 18

secondary structure of proteins

Answer 18

the arrangement of short sections of the chain

Question 19

tertiary structure

Answer 19

refers to the way in which chains are folded and twisted in the biologically active protein