The Chemistry of Life
I am sure you have all heard the from your parents at some point, most likely trying to get you to eat your vegetables, "You are what you eat!". This statement is shockingly accurate. When we think of what makes us, at the simplest level, it is the building blocks of all matter, atoms.
Studies have found that in one year 98% of the atoms in your body change out, and that 100% change out every five years. The building blocks that make you you are continually being exchanged.
The question then becomes how does the eggs and toast I have for breakfast become a hormone? liver cell? Hemoglobin? To answer this, one has to first understand the building blocks of life, macromolecules.
Although our journey into the chemistry of life will be short, I hope you can better appreciate what makes you, well.... you.
Studies have found that in one year 98% of the atoms in your body change out, and that 100% change out every five years. The building blocks that make you you are continually being exchanged.
The question then becomes how does the eggs and toast I have for breakfast become a hormone? liver cell? Hemoglobin? To answer this, one has to first understand the building blocks of life, macromolecules.
Although our journey into the chemistry of life will be short, I hope you can better appreciate what makes you, well.... you.
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Carbohydrates
Although getting an unwarranted bad rap as of late, carbohydrates are essential to your day to day life. Glucose, in particular, is the energy currency of the body. Everytime you have a thought, everytime you move a muscle, anytime your body does anything, you have glucose to thank. However, not all carbohydrates are equal, with some providing enegy storage in animals (glycogen) and plants (starch), while others combine together to make up the most common organic compound on the planet, cellulose.
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Lipids
Mmmmmmmmmmm fats. The delicious and extremely energy dense food that form a necessary part of your diet. With some being essential for good brain and blood vessel health, while others are outright dangerous, and can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke. The key to understanding what is healthy and unhealthy is looking at the chemical structure of lipids.
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Proteins
Proteins are how are genes are expressed. Like the other macromolecules they are built of monomers, amino acids. These chains of amino acids fold into complex 3D structures through a series of molecular interactions and bonding. It is this 3D structure that gives proteins their function.
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Enzymes
Reactions that occur in the body are often too slow for them to be of any use. This is where enzymes come into action. Enzymes (biological catalysts) speed up these reactions to a point where one can think of them as controlling whether these reactions occur in the body or not. These enzymes, due to the nature of their active site, are specific to often only one substrate. In addition to having high specificity, these enzymes also will only work optimally under a very narrow range of conditions.
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Nucleic Acids
Nucleic acids are the blueprints of life. They code for everything that makes you, well "you". They do this by being translated into proteins. Just like how computer programs are composed at their fundamental level of 0's and 1's, the genetic code that composes us is made up of four different letters (A, T, G, C). Each of these letters represents a different nucleic acid, and these nucleic acids arrange in long double stranded helices.
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