Carbon Chemistry

A carbon atom has 4 electrons in an outer

shell and completes its outer shell by sharing electrons with other atoms in
four covalent bonds.
The simplest organic compounds are hydrocarbons, which contain
only carbon and hydrogen atoms
the simplest hydrocarbon is methane..
Larger hydrocarbons (such as octane, with eight carbons)
are the main molecules in the gasoline we burn in cars
and other machines.
Hydrocarbons are also important fuels in your body.

Giant Molecules from Smaller Building Blocks

Three categories of macromolecules are carbohydrates (eg. starchy foods),
proteins (eg. enzymes and the molecules of your hair),
nucleic acids (eg. DNA)
Monomers combine together through a
dehydration reaction removing a molecule of water.
Giant molecules are hydrolysed to make their monomers available to cells.
Carbohydrates
These are classified as Monosaccharides
Simple sugars, or monosaccharides cannot be broken
down by hydrolysis into smaller sugars.
They are the main fuel molecules for cellular work.
Disaccharides
To form a disaccharide, two simple sugars are joined by a dehydration
reaction.
Polysaccharides
Complex carbohydrates, or polysaccharides, are long chains of sugar units,
polymers of monosaccharides. Starch and glycogen are storage
polysaccharides in plants and animals, respectively. The cellulose of plant
walls is an example of a structural polysaccharide.

Lipids
In contrast to carbohydrates and most other biological
molecules, lipids are organic compounds that are hydrophobic.
Lipids are neither macromolecules nor polymers.
Fats

A typical fat consists of a glycerol molecule joined with

three fatty acid molecules via dehydration reactions
The resulting fat is called a triglyceride,
When there is a double bond in the carbon skeleton of the fatty acid it is said to
be unsaturated.
The fatty acids in the fat molecule that lack double bonds in theirhydrocarbon
portion are saturated.
Unsaturated fats are converted to saturated fats by adding hydrogen, a process
called hydrogenation which creates trans fat

Proteins
Protein is a polymer constructed from amino acid monomers.Their most
important role is as enzymes and chemicals that change the rate of a chemical
reaction.

All proteins are macromolecules constructed from a common set of 20 kinds of

amino acids. Each amino acid consists of a central carbon atom bonded to four
covalent partners
Proteins as Polymers
Cells link amino acid monomers together by dehydration reactions. The bond
between adjacent amino acids is called a peptide bond. The resulting long chain
of amino acids is called polypeptide.
Protein Shape
A functional protein is one or more polypeptide chains precisely twisted,
folded, and coiled into a molecule of unique shape.
The levels of protein structure are: primary,secondary, and tertiary. Proteins with
more than one polypeptide chain have a fourth level: quaternary structure.
1- ucleic Acids
~ cleic acids are macromolecules that provide the
directions for building proteins.
There are actually two types of nucleic acids: DNA
which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (for
ribonucleic ilcid).
Nucleic acids are polymers made from monomers
called nucleotides (Figure 3.23). Each nucleotide contains
three parts. At the center of each nucleotide is a

five-carbon sugar, deoxyribose in DNA and ribose in

RNA
A molecule of cellular DNA is double-stranded, with
two polynucleotide strands wrapped around each other
to form a double helix
The enzyme lactase, like all proteins, is encoded by a
D A gene. A reasonable hypothesis is that lactoseintolerant
people have a defect in their lactase gene.
Evolution and Lactose
Intolerance in Humans
_ you'll recall from the Biology and Society section, most
of the world's population are lactose intolerant as adults
and thus do not easily digest the milk sugar lactose.