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OpenStacks, Organic compounds essential for human function. OpenStax CNX. 30 January 2017 http://cnx.org/contents/6773536c-3efb-44c9-8ace-78fafdce27e1@8. © April 9, 2018 OpenStax . Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Contents
Explain The Role Of Organic Compounds In Cellular Respiration
Organic compounds usually consist of groups of carbon atoms covalently bonded to hydrogen, usually oxygen, and other elements. Produced by living organisms, they are found throughout the world, in soil and seas, in commercial products, and in every cell of the human body. The four most important to human structure and function are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleotides. Before exploring these compounds, we first need to understand the chemistry of carbon.
Extraction Of Bioactive Compounds From Medicinal Plants And Herbs
What makes organic compounds ubiquitous is the chemistry of their carbon cores. Remember that carbon atoms have four electrons in their valence shell, and the octet rule states that atoms react in such a way that their valence shells are filled with eight electrons. Carbon atoms do not complete their valence shell by donating or accepting four electrons. Instead, they easily share electrons through covalent bonds.
Typically, carbon atoms share with other carbon atoms, often forming a long carbon chain known as a carbon skeleton. When they share, however, they don’t just share all of their electrons with each other. Instead, carbon atoms share electrons with various other elements, one of which is always hydrogen. Carbon and hydrogen groups are called hydrocarbons. If you study the diagrams of organic compounds in the rest of this chapter, you will see many hydrocarbon chains in one part of the compound.
Many combinations are possible to fill the four “vacancies” of carbon. Carbon can share electrons with oxygen or nitrogen or other atoms in certain regions of an organic compound. Moreover, the atoms to which the carbon atoms are attached may also be part of the functional group. A functional group is a group of atoms that are connected by strong covalent bonds and act as a unit in chemical reactions. You can think of functional groups as tightly knit “cliques” whose members are unlikely to break away. Five functional groups are important in human anatomy; These are hydroxyl, carboxyl, amino, methyl and phosphate groups (Table 1).
Hydroxyl groups are polar. They are components of all four types of organic compounds discussed in this chapter. They are involved in dehydration synthesis and hydrolysis reactions
Glycolipid In Organic Chemistry
Carbon’s affinity for covalent bonding means that many isolated and relatively stable organic molecules nevertheless readily form larger, more complex molecules. Any large molecule is called a macromolecule (macro- = “large”), and all organic compounds in this category fit this description. However, some macromolecules are composed of many “copies” of a single unit called a monomer (mono- = “one”; -mer = “part”). Like long-necked beads, these monomers form long polymers (poly- = “many”) linked by covalent bonds. There are many examples of monomers and polymers in organic compounds.
Monomers undergo dehydration synthesis to form polymers. As mentioned earlier, this reaction releases water molecules. Each monomer contributes: one gives up a hydrogen atom and the other gives up a hydroxyl group. Polymers are broken down into monomers by hydrolysis (-lysis = “tearing”). The bonds between their monomers are broken by the donation of a water molecule, which contributes a hydrogen atom to one monomer and a hydroxyl group to the other.
The word carbohydrate means “hydrated carbon”. Note that the root hydro- indicates water. A carbohydrate is a molecule composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; In most carbohydrates, hydrogen and oxygen are found in the same two to one relative ratio in water. In fact, the chemical formula for the “generic” molecule of a carbohydrate is (CH2O)n.
Carbohydrates are called saccharides, which means “sugar”. Three forms are important in the body. Monosaccharides are monomers of carbohydrates. Disaccharides (di- = “two”) are composed of two monomers. Polysaccharides are polymers and can consist of hundreds to thousands of monomers.
Difference Between Organic And Inorganic
A monosaccharide is a monomer of carbohydrates. Five monosaccharides are important in the body. Three of these are hexose sugars, so called because they each contain six carbon atoms. These are glucose, fructose and galactose, shown in Figure 1a. The remaining monosaccharides are two pentose sugars, each containing five carbon atoms. They are ribose and deoxyribose, shown in Figure 1b.
A disaccharide is a pair of monosaccharides. Disaccharides are formed by dehydration synthesis and the bonds connecting them are known as glycosidic bonds (glyco- = “sugar”). Three disaccharides (shown in Figure 2) are important to humans. These are sucrose, commonly called table sugar; lactose or milk sugar; and maltose or malt sugar. You can tell by their common names that you consume them in your diet; However, your body cannot use them directly. Instead, in the digestive tract, they are broken down into their constituent monosaccharides by hydrolysis.
Watch the video linked below to see the formation of the disaccharide. What happens when water forms a glycosidic bond?
Polysaccharides can contain from a few to a thousand or more monosaccharides. There are three important for the body (Figure 3):
Cells And The Versatile Functions Of Their Parts
The body gets carbohydrates from plant-based foods. Cereals, fruits, legumes, and other vegetables provide most of the carbohydrates in the human diet, although lactose is found in dairy products.
Although most body cells can break down other organic compounds for fuel, all body cells can use glucose. Furthermore, nerve cells (neurons) in the brain, through the spinal cord and peripheral nervous system, as well as red blood cells, can only use glucose for fuel. In the breakdown of glucose for energy, molecules of adenosine triphosphate, known as ATP, are produced. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is composed of a ribose sugar, an adenine base, and three phosphate groups. When its phosphate bonds are broken, ATP releases free energy and thus supplies the cell with ready energy. More ATP is produced in the presence of oxygen (O2) than in pathways that do not use oxygen. The overall reaction for the conversion of energy from glucose stored in ATP to energy can be written as:
In addition to being an important source of fuel, carbohydrates make up very little of the cell structure. For example, some carbohydrate molecules combine with proteins to form glycoproteins, and others combine with lipids to form glycolipids, both of which are found in the membranes that surround the body’s cell contents.
Alipids are one of the most diverse groups of compounds composed primarily of hydrocarbons. The few oxygen atoms it contains are often on the periphery of the molecule. Their nonpolar hydrocarbons make all lipids hydrophobic. In water, lipids do not form a true solution, but they can form an emulsion, which is a term for a mixture of solutes that do not mix well.
Flow Chemistry: Recent Developments In The Synthesis Of Pharmaceutical Products
Triglyceride is one of the most common dietary lipid groups and is found in large amounts in body tissues. This compound, commonly referred to as fat, is formed from the synthesis of two types of molecules (Figure 4):
Figure 4: Triglycerides are composed of glycerol attached to three fatty acids by dehydration synthesis. Note that glycerol gives up a hydrogen atom and the carboxyl group on the fatty acid each gives up a hydroxyl group.
Triglycerides are produced by dehydration synthesis. Glycerol releases a hydrogen atom from its hydroxyl groups on each bond, and the carboxyl group on each fatty acid chain releases a hydroxyl group. So a total of three water molecules are released.
Fatty acid chains that have no double carbon bonds anywhere in their length and therefore contain a maximum number of hydrogen atoms are called saturated fatty acids. These straight, rigid chains bind tightly together and are solid or semi-solid at room temperature (Figure 5a). Butter and lard are examples, as is the fat found on steaks or in your body. In contrast, fatty acids with one double carbon bond are attached to that bond (Figure 5b). These monounsaturated fatty acids do not bind tightly together and are liquid at room temperature. Polyunsaturated fatty acids contain two or more double carbon bonds and are liquid even at room temperature. Vegetable oils such as olive oil generally contain mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Aim: What Are Some Other Organic Molecules?
Figure 5: The degree of saturation of a fatty acid affects its size. (a) Saturated fatty acid chains are straight. (b) Unsaturated fatty acid chains are interlinked.
A diet high in saturated fatty acids increases the risk of heart disease, while a diet high in unsaturated fatty acids is thought to reduce the risk. This is especially true for omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids found in cold-water fish like salmon. These fatty acids have their first double carbon bond at the third hydrocarbon in the methyl group (referred to as the omega end of the molecule).
Finally, transfatty acids were found
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