Carbohydrates

- Basic units are the monosaccharides

- Monosaccharides are multiples of CH2O (e.g. glucose)
- Monosaccharides are distinguished by length of carbon skeleton and whether the sugar is an
aldose or ketose
- Disaccharides are monosaccharides joined by a glycosidic linkage (covalent bond formed
through dehydration).
- Polysaccharides are macromolecules – composed of thousands of monosaccharides joined
together, and either serve as storage or as building material
- Storage polysaccharides like starch are joined by 1-4 linkages and 1-6 linkages at branch
points. Starch serves as way to store energy as hydrolysis makes glucose available for use.
(Humans store glycogen, a polymer even more branched then amylopectin)
- Structural polysaccharides are composed of monomers in the beta configuration, which
results in a straight, unbranched molecule. Examples include cellulose (which associate to
form microfibrils) and chitin.

Lipid

- Hydrophobic in nature
- Fats, phospholipids, steroids
- Fat: composed of glycerol (an alcohol with 3 carbons, each with a hydroxyl group) and a fatty
acid (with a carboxyl group at one end). The fat is hydrophobic is due to the hydrocarbon
chains, which has nonpolar C-H bonds. Each glycerol joins with 3 fatty acid molecules to form
a triacylglycerol. Saturated fats (with no double bonds, thus maximum H atoms possible)
lack double bonds, and thus molecules can bond closely side by side – and are thus usually
solid at room temperature. Unsaturated fats have double bonds, resulting in bending,
preventing molecules form bonding closely – and are thus usually liquid at room
temperature. Fats serve as energy storage for animals which need a compact reservoir of
fuel.
- A phospholipid is similar to a triacylglycerol, except with 2 fatty acids and a phosphate group
attached to the glycerol. Because the hydrocarbon tails are hydrophobic and the phosphate
group is hydrophilic, they can form bilayers. They thus form important parts of cell walls.
- Steroids have a carbon skeleton consisting of 4 fused rings, varying in functional groups.
Many hormones are steroids produced from cholesterol.

Protein

- Constructed from a set of 20 amino acids, which form polypeptides. Proteins are
polypeptides folded and coiled into specific shapes.
- Polypeptides are formed by amino acids linking through a dehydration reaction, catalyzed by
enzymes. The covalent bond resulting from the reaction is known as the peptide bond.
- Protein folding is divided into primary structure (the sequence of amino acids), the
secondary structure (beta sheet or alpha helix), tertiary structure, and quaternary structure.
Protein folding is either spontaneous or chaperone assisted.

Nucleic acid
- Nucleic acids store and transmit hereditary information for the synthesis of specific proteins.
mRNA carries this information to the protein-synthesizing machinery in cells.
- Each nucleotide monomer consists of a pentose sugar bounded to a phosphate group and a
nitrogenous base (A,C,G, T or U in RNA). RNA has ribose while DNA has deoxyribose (thus
the name).
- Adjacent nucleotides are joined by phosphodiester bonds between OH and phosphate. The
linear order of nucleotide bases determines the resultant properties of the protein.
- DNA molecules consist of two polynucleotides – consisting of sugar-phosphate backbones
and nitrogenous bases. The sugar-phosphate backbones run antiparallel on the outside
while the nitrogenous bases pair on the inside of the helix (A-T, C-G or C-U).