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In other news, school is driving me crazy! And today's class was what I'd like to call "The Day Before the End". "The End" is the day of a test. So these days will happen periodically throughout the year. You're just going to have to deal with my stress and anxiety!
So we reviewed and reviewed. We took a quiz on Basic Chemistry (which I didn't do too bad on).
And we went over monosaccharides (basically a simple sugar; one chain; mono=one, yeah). Disaccharides are when two monosaccharides bond together (hence di=2) A disaccharide is also a simple sugar. And polysaccharides are when more than two monosaccharides bond together. These are all types of carbohydrates which is a type of macromolecule!
And then you have lipids which is basically the fat and oil part of the cell. The lipid consists of fatty acids that are either saturated or unsaturated.
Saturated fatty acids are bound to as many hydrogens as possible. They form straight chains, are solid at room temperature, and can be packed together tightly.
Unsaturated fatty acids are bound by one or more additional groups but are not bonded to as many hydrogen atoms as possible. These bonds cause the chains to bend. Unsaturated fatty acids are liquids at room temperature and are mostly found in plants. These can be artificially manufactured to have straight chains and are called trans fatty acids.
There are three types of lipids: triglycerides, phospholipids, and steroids.
Triglycerides are the main form of energy stored in animals (also called fat! yes people, fat is important and you cannot live without it so keep eating!!!)
Phospholipids are a major component of membranes surrounding cells.
And steroids (sterol cholesterol) is an important part of the cell membrane. Other forms of steroids are male and female hormones like estrogen and testosterone.
Then there are proteins, which consist of two kinds: peptides and polypeptides.
Peptides are short chains formed from bonding amino acids and polypeptides are long chains of amino acids. These proteins determine the overall structure and chemical properties of a protein. They help maintain the shape of the cell. They have enzymes that speed up the process of of chemical reactions. They are also antibodies and they target foreign substances for destruction (they're like the police officers of a cell).
Nucleic acids consist of two chains of nucleotides (smaller units of nucleic acids that are made up of CHONP) held together by chemical bonds and are found in living cells ad viruses. There are two types of nucleic acids: deoxyribonucleic (DNA) and ribonucleic (RNA)
There are three parts to the nucleic acid: the base (contains nitrogen), sugar (ribose in RNA, deoxyribose in DNA), and phosphate groups (contains phosphate, really I had no idea).
The sugar of the nucleotide binds to the phosphate group of the next nucleotide.
RNA is a single chain of nucleotides while DNA has two. A DNA molecule makes a double helix shape.
RNA uses it's information to assemble amino acids and make protein which creates the structure of a cell.
DNA contains genetic instructions for the correct amino acids in proteins. So DNA tells you what to do while a=RNA does it.
The four different types of bases in RNA and DNA are
1. Cytosine
2. Adenine
3. Guanine
4. Thymine (DNA) or Uracil (RNA)
Here's a picture, just because.
So there's a section of crash course awesomeness. I might post something else depending on my mood and whether or not I want to type up my notes, again. But, I will be studying like crazy!!
Until next time.
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