Biochemistry plays a vital role in the everyday life of everything natural and mechanical. Throughout the course, we gained an understanding of why having four stable covalent bonds that bond readily to elements makes carbon qualified to be the foundation of sustainable life. With this fundamental principle in mind, we continued learning by understanding the essentials of water. Water is amphipathic, so when participating in reactions water can either hydrolyze or condense the reaction. For example, the reaction converting ADP to ATP involves the condensation of water and vice versa resulting in the hydrolysis of water converting ATP to ADP. We then went on to learn about amino acids and their relationship to proteins. We discussed various …show more content…
During that time we learned various steps and methods to purifying protein. We segwayed into enzymes and their ability to catalyze reactions by lowering the activation energy. We also learned the different classifications that specific enzymes depending on the reactions they catalyze. For example, enzymes that are involved in catalyzing hydrolysis reactions are known as hydrolases. Lastly, we looked at polysaccharides for short-term energy storage and their interactions through glycosidic bondage. Nucleotides were also mentioned and their involvement in DNA and RNA. Concluding the course, we observed lipids and their involvement with long-term energy storage. With all that we have learned, I now reflect and appraise the role that biochemistry plays in my everyday life as well as from a global point of view. Biochemistry is continuously working, even without visual proof. Chemical reactions are happening all around and within us. One example where biochemistry plays a major role is in the storage of energy. There are two biomolecules that are responsible for energy storage: polysaccharides and lipids. Polysaccharides deal with the short-term storage and are readily available for conversion to …show more content…
One example that teeters between good and bad is the role of biochemistry in the internal combustible engine. The combustible engine takes liquid gasoline and converts it to gas which is burned and converted into mechanical energy that powers the car. Growing up in Los Angeles, CA there are people and cars everywhere. However, with so many cars using gasoline there are two critical downfalls. The first comes from the accumulation of smog, pollutants that interact with the atmosphere. When the gas is burned, the waste is filtered through the catalytic converter but smog is still emitted. Too much smog inhalation can lead to birth defects and even cancer. The other downfall, which is just as important, is global warming. When smog levels are high enough those harmful gases emitted by engines get trapped and are unable to leave the atmosphere. This attracts more sunlight and in turn leads to added melting of the ice caps. Yet, the hope for Earth is not lost. There are measures being taken looking into alternative sources, other than gasoline, that we can use to power cars. Some have looked into using ethanol from corn and cellulose as a substitute, while others have looked into electrical power via batteries. Mechanically, while biochemistry has improved the daily lives of everyone on Earth via the internal combustible engine, the same biochemistry has
The more acidic a substance is the less oxygen it will produce when going through a chemical reaction. During the Lab “How Do Changes in pH Levels Affect Enzymes Activity”, the researcher conducted an experiment to test the effects that an acidic, neutral, and a base substance will have when combine it with hydrogen peroxide. The data table shows that HCL (acidic substance) barley produced any oxygen at all when it was combining with Hydrogen Peroxide. The pH level for HCL was 2.5; this level indicates that the substance was very acidic. When the H2O and NaOH were tested they produced more bubbles than HCL. NaoH produced a little more bubbles than HCL. The pH that NaoH produced was a 9, which is a base. H2O produced more bubbles than both substances;
Of the many functions of proteins, catalysis is by far the most vital. When catalysis is not present, most reactions in the biological systems take place very slowly to produce at an adequate pace for metabolising organism. The catalysts that take this role are called enzymes. Enzymes are the most efficient catalysts; they can enhance rate of reaction by up to 1020 over uncatalysed reactions. (Campbell et al, 2012).
Enzymes analysis enables scientist to look the what, why, and how of life. A majority of reactions inside to human body are endothermic, without enzymes lowering the activation energy of these reactions life would not be possible. By understanding what the optimum environments of enzymes are, specifically with sucrase, scientist can better understand enzyme kinetics. In the body thousands of enzymes help regulate and produce chemicals. One very important enzyme K-ATPase in the body help catalyze the reaction of ATP into ADP creating a free phosphate group and helping create an sodium and potassium electrochemical gradient in the body (Peluffo et al. 2004). If the body did not keep its temperature, pH, and concentration of substrate at the optimum levels enzymes would not be able to process required energy fully and the cells would start to die. Sucrose is an important aspect of life and its reduction to glucose has to be carefully controlled in photosynthesis. In the photosystem 2 stage of photosynthesis sucrose helps stabilize water so hydrogen's electrons can be taken and used to create energy (Barry and Halverson et al.2003). As the optimum environment for an enzyme is reached the need to accurately and analytically
Introduction: Cellular respiration and fermentation are used in cells to generate ATP. All cells in a living organism require energy or ATP to perform cellular tasks (Urry, Lisa A., et al. , pg. 162). Since energy can not be created (The first law of thermodynamics) just transformed, the cell must get its energy from an outside source (Urry, Lisa A., et al. , pg.162). “Totality of an organism’s chemical reactions is called metabolism” (Urry, Lisa A., et al., pg. 142). Cells get this energy through metabolic pathways, or metabolism. As it says in Campbell biology, “Metabolic pathways that release stored energy by breaking down complex molecules are called catabolic pathways” (Urry, Lisa A., et al. pg.
Because nucleic acids are polymers of individual nucleotide monomers. Each nucleotide has three parts which are 5 carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base.
There are thousands of chemical reactions that occur in a cell at every moment. These chemical reactions do not occur randomly, they are highly under the control of biological catalysts called enzymes. Most of these enzymes are proteins. These proteins have certain primary structures directed by
“Enzymes are proteins that have catalytic functions” [1], “that speed up or slow down reactions”[2], “indispensable to maintenance and activity of life”[1]. They are each very specific, and will only work when a particular substrate fits in their active site. An active site is “a region on the surface of an enzyme where the substrate binds, and where the reaction occurs”[2].
To test enzyme activity, an experiment was conducted in the laboratory. In this experiment, the enzyme Amylase was chosen because it assists disassemble the polysaccharide starch. Starch is the main energy storage in plants. Human cells need the energy of stored in the starch to be introduced in the form of Maltose. Maltose is a simple sugar that can be used to generate the energy needed to power cellular work
Chromatography is a separation technique in which the mixture to be separated is dissolved in a solvent and the resulting solution, often called the mobile phase, is then passed through or over another material, the stationary phase. The separation of the original mixture depends on how strongly each component is attracted to the stationary phase. Substances that are attracted strongly to the stationary phase will be retarded and not move alone with the mobile phase. Weakly attracted substances will move more rapidly with the mobile phase.
Protein purification is a process that can be employed to separate a single protein from a larger starting material which may be anything from an organ to a cell. Isolating a purified protein from a larger fraction enables further analysis such as determination of amino acid sequence, potential biological function, and even evolutionary relationship. (Cuatrecasas 1970) In this experiment, the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase will be purified, this enzyme is found extensively in human cells and catalyzes the conversion of lactate to pyruvate, an essential part in energy production. LDH is a key part of anaerobic energy production especially within glycolysis in which LDH catalyzes the conversion of the reverse reaction, pyruvate to lactate, generating NAD+ from NADH, reproducing the oxidized form of the coenzyme which can be used for oxidative respiration. (Markert 1963) Due to the fact that number of purification steps correlates with the purity of the protein multiple purification techniques will be used to isolate a pure form of LDH. LDH will be isolated from a larger “cytosol” fraction collected from a homogenized rat liver in a previous fractionation exercise. Of the procedures that will be used to isolate and purify proteins from a larger fractionate are a set of techniques collectively known as chromatography. These techniques all have the same premise, in that they consist of a stationary phase, also known as the
Proteins are one of the key biomolecules that make up the human body and facilitate different processes and reactions in the body (Silverthorn, 2016). Proteins exist in every cell in the human body and there are many different types of proteins with specialized functions that are necessary to maintain homeostasis (Silverthorn, 2016). Enzymes are a type of protein that performs like catalysts in the cells and start specific reactions (Ira, 2009).Catalysts start or increase the rate at
Photosynthesis and respiration, the most important energetic processes occurring in the cellular membranes, are transforming one form of energy into another. Photosystems are able to transform the energy of photons into chemical energy which is stored in molecules like ATP or NADPH. Furthermore, the chemical energy of reduced compounds by oxidation processes is transformed, by the respiratory chains, also into molecules like ATP (Lodish et al., 2000, Hohmann-Marriott et al., 2011).
For the last 4.82 billion years that life has existed on earth, organisms have evolved and each different species is unique in it’s own way. Although organisms can be drastically different from one another all species require just one process to produce the energy for life. Cellular respiration needs only glucose and oxygen for the chemical process to occur in the cell mitochondria but the fact that just the energy created by cellular respiration can carry out other life processes and other bodily functions is astonishing. This essay will discuss the multitude of ways organisms get the energy for life
important role because every living organism needs proteins in order to speed up the biochemical
These four biomolecules are metabolized by the animal body. Each biomolecule is broken down in a different process. The end result of each process is the creation of usable energy for the body. This energy is used to work and generate other chemical reactions that help the body move and think. Carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids each provide energy to different places within the body that, in turn, stimulate other chemical reactions to occur, creating a chain reaction of chemical reactions throughout the body. The metabolization of these major