Biochemistry-macromolecules

Summary

In this lecture, Sarah Hosch explores the four major types of biomolecules: amino acids, nucleotides, simple sugars, and fatty acids. Each plays a crucial role in biological functions and structures, from forming proteins and nucleic acids to serving as fuel sources and structural components. The discussion extends to how these biomolecules combine to form larger macromolecules like proteins, nucleic acids, and polysaccharides. Key differences between saturated and unsaturated fatty acids are also highlighted, along with details on polysaccharides like starch, cellulose, and chitin. Understanding these biomolecules' structures and functions is fundamental in biochemistry.

Highlights

• Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and play roles in metabolism and enzymatic reactions. 🏗️
• Nucleotides build nucleic acids and participate in energy conversion and signaling. ⚡
• Simple sugars, such as glucose, are essential for energy and cellular structure. 🍬
• Fatty acids are key components of cell membranes and can be saturated or unsaturated. 🥓
• Polysaccharides, like starch and cellulose, are chains of sugars crucial for energy storage and structural integrity. 🌾

Key Takeaways

• Amino acids, nucleotides, simple sugars, and fatty acids are essential biomolecules with distinct roles. 🧬
• Nucleotides form nucleic acids and are vital for genetic information and energy conversion. 📜
• Simple sugars provide energy and serve structural and recognition roles in cells. 🍭
• Fatty acids are key to cell membrane structure and as energy sources, with saturated and unsaturated variations. 🍳
• Biomolecules combine to form macromolecules like proteins, nucleic acids, and polysaccharides, crucial for life. 🏗️

Overview

Biomolecules are the fundamental components of life, and Sarah Hosch's lecture delves into their various forms and functions. She begins with amino acids, highlighting their role in building proteins crucial for many biological processes, including metabolism and signal transduction. This lays the foundation for understanding larger protein structures.

Next, Hosch covers nucleotides, the building blocks of nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA. These molecules are pivotal not only for storing genetic information but also for energy transfer within cells. Simple sugars, like glucose, are introduced as vital energy sources and components in cellular recognition and structure.

Lastly, the lecture highlights fatty acids and their significance in forming cell membranes and serving as energy reserves. The distinction between saturated and unsaturated fatty acids is crucial for understanding their structural differences. The discussion wraps up with macromolecules, focusing on proteins, nucleic acids, and polysaccharides, which are polymers that form the basis of cellular and structural integrity in organisms.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Biomolecules and Macromolecules There are four major types of biomolecules, which will be the focus of the course throughout the semester. This chapter introduces these biomolecules and emphasizes their importance, as further detailed study will follow. The four main types are: 1) Amino acids, 2) Nucleotides, 3) Simple sugars or carbohydrates, and 4) Other groups (likely to be elaborated in the continuation of the content).
• 00:30 - 01:00: Overview of Major Biomolecule Groups This chapter provides an overview of the major biomolecule groups, highlighting the general structure and function of these groups. It explains how they are assembled into larger macromolecules. The focus is particularly on fatty acids and amino acids, with a specific reference to the role of amino acids in proteins and their functions related to proteins.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Amino Acids and Their Functions The chapter titled 'Amino Acids and Their Functions' focuses on the roles of amino acids in general metabolism and enzymatic reactions, as well as their involvement in signal transduction. Additionally, it introduces nucleotides, which are crucial for building nucleic acids involved in various biological functions.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Nucleotides and Their Structure This chapter explores the structure and function of nucleotides, which are essential components within cellular processes. Nucleotides provide the necessary information for cellular functions and are crucial in energy conversion, particularly ATP and GTP. They play active roles in signal transduction and enzyme catalysis, as well as in regulating enzyme activities. Additionally, the chapter touches upon simple sugars, with glucose being highlighted as a significant energy source.
• 03:30 - 05:00: Simple Sugars and Their Roles This chapter explores the significance of simple sugars in various biological processes. Simple sugars contribute to structural elements in plants and bacterial cell walls and play a crucial role in cell recognition by labeling proteins and lipids on cell surfaces. It briefly mentions fatty acids, highlighting their importance as major components of cell membranes, fuel sources, and players in signal transduction. The chapter emphasizes the unique structural characteristics of these biochemical groups.
• 05:00 - 06:30: Fatty Acids and Their Types In this chapter, the focus is on how to identify different types of fatty acids by breaking down their structures into individual units. The readers are encouraged to practice this technique for better recognition and understanding. For example, when examining an amino acid, one could use diagrams to represent the chiral carbon and the carboxylic acid group, which are part of its structure.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Building Large Macromolecules The chapter titled 'Building Large Macromolecules' focuses on the foundational elements and processes involved in constructing complex molecular structures. It explains the role of an amino group and how it can be defined in molecular terms. The narrative may also delve into the representation of hydrogen and other structures that play a critical role in forming larger macromolecules. The chapter likely emphasizes the assembly of these components and their significance in biochemistry, providing a detailed exploration of how large macromolecules are synthesized from simpler units.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Nucleic Acids and Polymers The chapter discusses the structure of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. It explains that an amino acid consists of a central carbon atom attached to a carboxyl group, an amino group, a hydrogen atom, and a variable side chain (R group). This detailed description underscores the variability and complexity of amino acids as they relate to the formation of proteins.
• 09:30 - 11:30: Proteins and Peptide Bonds This chapter discusses proteins and peptide bonds, focusing on the structure of amino acids. It highlights the importance of visualization techniques to compare similarities and differences among various molecular structures. Key components of amino acids, such as the presence of nitrogen, are emphasized as foundational elements in understanding these molecules.
• 11:30 - 14:30: Polysaccharides and Their Structures The chapter introduces the functional groups of polysaccharides, focusing on the amino and carboxyl groups. It highlights the presence of chiral carbons, which are central in determining the structure, by having each carbon atom attached to different groups, making them different from each other and non-superimposable.

Biochemistry-macromolecules Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 there are four major types of biomolecules and today we're going to go through those different biomolecules and the rest of the semester we're going to be looking in more detail at the structures and functions of these biomolecules the first group are amino acids the second group are nucleotides the third group are simple sugars or carbohydrates and the fourth group are
• 00:30 - 01:00 fatty acids for this section you will need to know the general structure and general functions of these groups as well as how they're put together to build in general larger macromolecules so here is a look at the characteristics of the different biomolecule groups for example amino acids primarily star found in proteins and thus their functions have to do with general protein
• 01:00 - 01:30 functions the ones that we're going to focus on in this class are going to be general metabolism and how they're involved in enzymatic reactions as well as signal transduction the second group are nucleotides and these are involved in building nucleic acids which are important of course in in including all
• 01:30 - 02:00 of the information to build everything we need in a Cell as well as either involved in energy conversion so things like ATP and gtp they're also involved in signal transduction and an enzyme catalysis and regulation of enzyme activity the third group are our simple sugars and glucose is the main one that were most familiar worth so they're of course important as a fuel source
• 02:00 - 02:30 there are also important in structure for example in plants and bacteria for cell walls and in cell recognition for labeling proteins and lipids on the surface of cells fatty acids are our fourth group and these are important as major components of cell membranes as fuel sources as well as in signal transduction these all have a particular characteristic structure and
• 02:30 - 03:00 we can divide these up into individual units and this is something that I suggest you practice so that you can quickly identify what type of molecule you're looking at so for example if you wanted to do this for let's just take an amino acid which we're going to look at on the next slide you could simply define a circle for the chiral carbon and then you could define a carboxylic acid or a carboxyl group then you could
• 03:00 - 03:30 define an amino group something like this and then you could define a hydrogen and then maybe you wanted to come up with another structure to represent our
• 03:30 - 04:00 group and so maybe you just want it for example do something that's a cyclic unit like that so then you can use these simple symbols in order to build your amino acid so what we're gonna see in the next slide is that an amino acid has a central carbon it's attached to a carboxyl group and an amino group as well as a hydrogen and then it's going to have a variable R group so its
• 04:00 - 04:30 structure and symbols might look something like this you could then imagine doing something similar for the rest of the groups and then you can compare their similarities and differences so this is an easy way to test your understanding of what these molecules might look like so the first one we're going to talk about is a group of amino acids so there's a couple of key components first of all they contain nitrogen and there this is part of the
• 04:30 - 05:00 amino portion of our functional groups the second functional group that's important is our carboxyl group which is here they're going to have again a central a chiral carbon or chiral carbons excuse me because each one in general is going to be attached to something different and thus you can't actually put one on top of another and then they're going to have a hydrogen
• 05:00 - 05:30 and then something that defines the function of that amino acid and the case of glycine that our group is simply going to be a hydrogen so this is actually where they're going to differ from one another is here with the R group The structure of nucleotides is going to look quite a bit different. They do have nitrogen as part of their structure as well as oxygen and carbon but you're
• 05:30 - 06:00 going to see we can divide this one up a little bit differently and again you could use symbols to help you out. So the first component that you're going to see here is our sugar which is here in the center okay so every nucleotide will have a five membered sugar and that will be either a ribose or deoxyribose they're going to have a nitrogenous base which is this component here and then
• 06:00 - 06:30 they're going to have a phosphate group which is this unit here now the differences in the structures will depend on the 5 carbon I'm sorry the 5 Munder membered I'm sugar ring so the ribose or the deoxyribose as well as variability in our nitrogenous base simple sugars will contain a general characteristic structure of a carbon
• 06:30 - 07:00 hydrogen and oxygen in a very specific ratio which is a 2 to 1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atoms however they can sometimes be replaced with other functional groups which might make them a little bit different monosaccharides are going to have one sugar unit disaccharides have two sugar units anything larger than that is a complex carbohydrate which we'll talk about in a
• 07:00 - 07:30 little bit you do need to know the structure of glucose you should be able to recognize and draw this structure and understand as we're going to see it's important as a major fuel in the body the simple unit for a fatty acid is going to contain a section here which is a large long hydrocarbon chain so it consists only of carbons and hydrogen's
• 07:30 - 08:00 and then it's going to have a carboxyl group on the end which is then going to allow it to form bonds and we're going to see later with other carbon skeletons or other molecules so for fatty acids there's two major types saturated and unsaturated and this
• 08:00 - 08:30 has to do with the carbon carbon chain and how many double bonds are present in the carbon carbon chain so you can have a saturated fatty acid which is going to just have a string of our carbons and hydrogen's and that all of these carbons are forming bonds with either the carbon or a hydrogen so they're fully saturated
• 08:30 - 09:00 with carbon with hydrogen's a polyunsaturated fatty acid has carbon-carbon double bonds so basically what that means is that instead of a hydrogen here you can have a double bond so remember that carbon can only form can form four share four pairs of electrons so if we remove one of those hydrogen's then it has to share another pair of electrons with the carbon so you still have 1 2 3 4 different pairs of electrons that are being shared so that
• 09:00 - 09:30 would be a an unsaturated unsaturated when it has a carbon-carbon double bond so based on what we just mentioned what would you think about for the structure of palmitate which is a very common fatty acid found in our body now keep in
• 09:30 - 10:00 mind if you look here when you have a parenthesis with a 14 this means that this unit ch2 is actually being repeated 14 times and if you'll notice here what you're going to see is these would all then be carbon-carbon single bonds so if you have all carbon-carbon single bonds what does that tell you it tells you that your fully saturated with hydrogen's so this particular fatty acid would be classified as a saturated fatty acid if it had one carbon-carbon double
• 10:00 - 10:30 bond it would be a monounsaturated if it had multiple carbon-carbon double bonds it would be polyunsaturated now let's talk a little bit about larger macromolecules so how do we put together our simple biomolecules to build these higher-end structural forms so the main ones that we're going to talk about are going to be proteins nucleic acids
• 10:30 - 11:00 polysaccharides all of which are classified as chemical polymers poly equals many okay many Murs so these are actually you're putting together all of the same unit and then the last one that we're going to talk about our lipids and lipids are not are not polymers so these are in another group so if we look at
• 11:00 - 11:30 nucleic acids first these are covalently linked together nucleotides so we're going to take more than one nucleotide and we're going to put them together using a phosphodiester bond so here we have our first new are our first nucleotide and here's our second nucleotide so simple examples of these include both DNA and RNA proteins are also macro molecule polymers in this
• 11:30 - 12:00 case we have amino acids that are the monomer unit that are covalently linked together so we also call these polypeptides because we're going to put them together using a peptide bond so here's our peptide bonds and they're actually going to form between the carboxyl group of one and the amino group of a second amino acid so each one of these is an individual amino acid oops this luncheon actually go like this
• 12:00 - 12:30 and then you've got your second one here and your third one here so based on this particular structure if you look at this peptide bond what type of functional group do you actually see as an example of this peptide bond so the peptide bond is an example of an amide so please make sure that you go
• 12:30 - 13:00 back and review all of your functional groups because you do need to have these established as prior knowledge before starting the class the last group that we want to talk about our polysaccharides polysaccharides simple mean some simply mean that you have many simple sugars so we have repeating units of simple sugars put together so here's a couple of different examples the first one here is starch okay and starch is our storage form of energy in plants and
• 13:00 - 13:30 these are a polymer of glucose containing alpha one two four glycosidic bonds so a glycosidic bond is a bond formed between two simple sugars to form our polysaccharide the next example is cellulose and this looks structurally very similar to amylose or starch however in the case of cellulose you
• 13:30 - 14:00 have beta one two four glycosidic bonds which you can see here and look at the position of our bonds and that's going to let you know if they're above or below the plane that indicates the type of bond that is formed the last example is chitin which is an exoskeleton component of insects and crustaceans and this also has a beta once - for glycosidic bond but in this case
• 14:00 - 14:30 our units of our monomers are actually modified and so these have an n acetyl glucosamine unit instead of a glucose unit