Essay title: Hydrogen bonds and their importance within living organisms

Hydrogen bonding occurs within many biological processes that are essential for life. It is the
attraction between the partially positive hydrogen atoms and the partially negative oxygen
atoms. Due to it being a weak force, it is easily formed and broken. It is found in water
molecules, proteins and to stabilise DNA. For instance, hydrogen bonds form between water
molecules due to it being polar. The molecular structure contributes to its properties as it is
cohesive in the xylem of plants, it has a high latent heat of vaporisation as well as being a
good solvent and has a specific heat capacity meaning that a lot of energy would be needed
to raise the temperature of water which keeps the environment stable. When water is
heated, the bonds break which leads to the temperature of the water to rise. In addition,
water is involved in many other metabolic reactions such as waste removal, transporting
nutrients around the body, and maintaining body temperature. In biological molecules,
condensation reactions produce a water molecule during the formation of a bond and
hydrolysis breaks a bond by using a water molecule.

The polynucleotide molecule DNA had two antiparallel strands held together by hydrogen
bonds. It helps in stabilising its structure between the nitrogenous base pairs known as
complementary base pairing. The base Adenine pairs with Thymine and two hydrogen bonds
are formed between them whereas Guanine and Cytosine have three bonds. The hydrogen
bonds influence how DNA takes its shape and how it interacts with other molecules.
However, during semi-conservative replication, the DNA strands unwind due to the enzyme
DNA Helicase which leads to the bond breaking between the complementary bases. DNA
Polymerase joins the adjacent nucleotides together during a condensation reaction.

In proteins, hydrogen bonding occurs in tertiary structures between the R groups whereas in
secondary structures, the bonds form between the amino acid and carboxyl groups. In alpha
helixes, the bond leads to the helical shape and the beta sheets leads to folding. The
hydrogen bonds help to maintain the shape of the protein which determines its function.
Proteins also contain other bonds such as ionic bonds and disulfide bridges however,
hydrogen bonds are the weakest and therefore can easily be broken.