Week 2 Flashcards
What are organic molecules?
Molecules that contain carbon
What is the relationship between polymers and monomers?
Polymers are complex molecules made up of repeated simpler units known as monomers that are connected by covalent bonds.
What are the components of a single amino acid?
a central (or alpha) carbon, an amino group, a single hydrogen atom, a carboxyl group and an R-group (which gives the amino acid its unique properties).
How are amino acids attached to eachother?
Through covalent bonds known as peptide bonds. Water is released as a by-product.
What are the structural differences between RNA and DNA?
Both have a 5-carbon sugar, but on the 2’ carbon RNA has an OH group and DNA just has a hydrogen atom. With RNA, the nucleotide base thymine is replaced by uracil. DNA is double stranded and RNA is single strandedn
What is a pyrimidine base? Give some examples
A nucleotide base with a single ring. Examples are cytosine (C), thymine (T) and Uracil (U).
What is a purine base? Give some examples.
A nucleotide base with a double ring. Examples are Guanine (G) and Adenine (A)
What is a phosphodiester bond?
A type of covalent bond that joins two nucleotide bases together.
Name the two types of monosaccharides and their respective functional groups.
Ketoses with a ketone group.
Aldoses with an aldehyde group.
How do monosaccharides form polysaccharides (complex carbohydrates)?
By forming glycosidic bonds between the carbon 1’ on one molecule and the hydroxyl group on the other molecule. This produces water as a by-product.
How do lipids differ to other common macromolecules?
They do not have a repeating structure of monomers to create the polymer, but instead are classified together due to the shared property of being hydrophobic.
What are unsaturated fats?
Fats / lipids that contain carbon-carbon double bonds. This means that they have ‘kinks’ in the molecule at each double bond.
How do cis fatty acids and trans fatty acids differ?
Cis fatty acids have the hydrogen atoms (on either side of a double bond) on the same side of the chain. Trans fatty acids also have a double bond but the hydrogen atoms are on opposite sides of the chain. They are generally more linear than cis fatty acids.
What are saturated fats?
Lipids / fats that do not have any double carbon bonds.
What are the types of bonding present in each level of protein (primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary)?
Primary - covalent bonds (peptide)
Secondary - hydrogen bonds
Tertiary - hydrogen bonds, ionic bonds, hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions, Van der Waals forces and disulfide bridges.
Quaternary - hydrogen bonds
Why are carbohydrates important for life?
Carbohydrates provide energy when broken down, and can also act as structural support in certain organisms - eg. cellulose in plants.
What is the biological significance of proteins?
Proteins are able to catalase biological reactions (as enzymes). They also act as structural components for the cell.
Differentiate between endergonic and exergonic reactions.
Endergonic reactions require the input of energy as the products have more energy that the reactants. Conversely, in exergonic reactions the reactants have more energy than the products, causing these reactions to release energy.
What is activation energy?
The energy required for the reaction to start / the energy required to form the transition state.
