Intro To Biochem 1 Flashcards
What is life?
- 3 common features
- organization of matter (living things have order)
- transform energy from the environment (living things maintain homeostasis)
- Self replicate (Living things accurately reproduce)
Biochemistry
The scientific discipline that seeks to explain life at the molecular level
Organization in the human body
Organism Organ Cell Organelle Molecules DNA
Vitalism
- living things have a special vital force
- 1828 friedrich wholer synthesized urea from ammonium cyanate
Naturally occurring molecules can be synthesized
- tamoxifen (breast cancer treatment)
- penicillin
- discovered in 1928
- not mass produced until 1942
Divisions of biochem
- Nucleic acids
- proteins
- carbohydrates
- lipids
- biochem: the structures, functions, and metabolism of the 4 major classes of biomolecules
Amino acids
- an amino group
- a carboxylic acid group
- a side chain
Carbohydrates
- also called monosaccharides or sugars
- general chemical formula (CH20)n where n>3
Nucleotides
-nucleotides are the building blocks of Nucleic acids (DNA and RNA)
Lipids
- have large hydrophobic regions
- wide variety of structures
Macromolecules
- proteins are polymers of amino acids
- nucleic acids are polymers of nucleotides
- polysaccharides are polymers of monosaccharides
What do the biomolecules do
- Proteins:
- carry out metabolic reactions
- store energy
- support cellular structures
- Nucleic acids
- encode information
- carry out metabolic reactions
- support cellular structures
- Polysaccharides
- encode information
- store energy
- support cellular structures
Another perspective of biochem
- Genome: consists of DNA. ~21,000 protein coding human genes
- Transcriptome: mRNA, 25-50% of genes expressed in most cells
- Proteome: Enzymes. Expression of genes results in many proteins, each with a distinct function
- Metabolome: often involves metabolism
-biochem and molecular bio connects the genotype to phenotype
Living organisms obey the laws of thermodynamics
-any reversible process can proceed spontaneously in the direction that lowers the system’s Gibbs free energy
G < 0: spontaneous (exergonic)
G > O: non-spontaneous (endergonic)
G=H-TS
(H is enthalpy, S is entropy)
S is proportional to the number of possible ways a state can exist
Anabolism
Biosynthesis of larger, more election rich biomolecules
