Chapter2

Biological macromolecules

Biological macromolecules 2.1

Biological macromolecules are important cellular components and perform a wide array of
functions necessary for the survival and growth of living organisms. Staudinger was the first
to propose that many large Biological macromolecules are built by covalently linking smaller
.Biological macromolecules together

:There are three classes of Biological macromolecules

.Proteins. 2-Polysaccharides. 3-Nucleic acids -1

:Functions of some Biological macromolecules

Function Type of macromolecules example

Facilitating chemical protein Enzymes
reactions
Food storage Polysaccharides Starch

Transmitting hereditary Nucleic acids DNA

information

Biological macromolecules are constructed by linking together to form long chains without
the element of water. If the building blocks are identical a polymer is formed. In contrast if
several types of building blocks are used and there is no 'repeating unit'. we get something
.very much more sophisticated and versatile

Storage of food 2.2

The maintenance of life requires a continuous input of energy but living organisms do not
have access to supplies of energy from the environment at all times. The ideal storage
material would be something that is reasonably compact and inert; the two types of
.material that have been chosen are polysaccharides and lipids

Polysaccharides stores: polysaccharides are polymers of sugar molecules, and 'sugar' is

colloquial term used to describe carbohydrates, empirical formula (CH2O) n. Many of the
reactions going on in living cells are concerned with the degradation of sugar molecules to
.release the energy

We should study the chemical structure of sugars to know how they function as sources of
.energy and how they can be linked into polymers

Sugars or carbohydrates are characterized by the possession of aldehyde (-CHO) or ketone

(=C=O) groups in addition to two or more hydroxyl (-OH) groups. The simplest carbohydrate
is glyceraldehyde ( CH2OH.CHOH.CHO) and other members of the group are containing
more –CHOH groupings, e.g. CH2OH-(CHOH)n-CHO when we come to build a three –
dimensional model of glyceraldehyde we find that we can do it in two ways as shown in the
:picture

These two are very similar in chemical and physical properties but they are not identically.
Any compound has four different chemical groupings attached to a single carbon atom will
.show this type of isomerism and they are called optical isomers

The most commonly occurring carbohydrates in nature have five or six carbon atoms. The
.most frequently encountered are glucose, fructose and ribose

The main features of the molecules from the biological point of view may be summed up as
:follows

.They have hydrophilic properties-1

.They have characteristic shapes and can be recognized by their specific shapes -2

.They can form polymers-3

:Polysaccharide structure

Polymerization can occur with the elimination of

:molecule of water as shown in figure

The main storage polysaccharide in many plants is

starch and animal’s glycogen. There are both large
molecules consisting of hundreds glucose molecules
.linked together

A food storage molecule must be able to release its small molecular components for use
.when food is no longer being taken from the environment

Starch and glycogen can do this when acted upon by the appropriate biological catalysts or
.enzymes
Sugars are often transported round organisms, sometimes as simple sugars (mono
saccharides), sometimes as disaccharides in which two mono saccharides are linked together
.e.g. milk contain disaccharides lactose

Fat stores: Although a great deal of energy is stored as polysaccharide by both animals
(glycogen) and plants (starch), an alternative storage material is fat. Fats belong to the class
.of compound called 'lipids'. They are not macromolecules because of their hydrophobic

?What is a lipid

We are familiar with fats in the kitchen such as lard, butter and dripping, and these are all
'lipids', lipids include fatty acids, these fatty acids may have short or long carbon chains, and
.may be saturated or unsaturated

:Prosperities of lipid stores

Neutral triglycerides are almost completely insoluble in water, and collections of such
molecules tend to come together and segregate from the aqueous phase forming a spherical
droplet .The fatty acids themselves are a good store of energy because they represent
.carbon in highly-reduced form

Information, interaction and control 2.3

Storage macromolecules are, comparatively speaking; very simple in structure they could be
described by a sequence …A.A.A.A.A. A…, perhaps with some branching. It is clear that if we
had a molecule with a different and non-repeating structure such as...A.B.A.A.D.C.B... it h
could be used to store information in much the same way as the punched tape used with
computers. When macromolecules coil up and when they interact with other molecules the
interactions depend not on covalent bonds, but on so called 'weak bonds ' which can readily
.be broken and remade

Proteins 2.4
The proteins represent a major class of macromolecule found in all living organism. There
are literally hundreds of thousands of different types of protein and individual cell may
contain several thousand different ones. Proteins are built up by linking together chemical
.units called amino acids

Proteins are typically unbranched chains consisting of several hundred amino acid units
.linked by peptide bonds but it is not really a polymer

All of the naturally-occurring amino acids are alpha-amino acids .Amino acids can react
together with the elimination of water to form a peptic long strings of amino acids are called
.polypeptides

Although protein molecules are basically long, unbranched chains of amino acids, they may
not necessarily occur naturally as long thin molecules. Most of the soluble proteins tend to
coil up to form more or less globular structures while many of the structural or is soluble
proteins tend to twist together ,to form ropes or lie side by side to form
. sheets.Enzymes,protein,hormones and antibodies are soluble proteins

:Levels of protein structure

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Some proteins are composed of single polypeptide chain but many have more than one
.polypeptide chain

Because protein structure is maintained by weak bonds, protein tends only to be stable
.under rather mild conditions

Conjugated proteins: Proteins by themselves perform many tasks in living organism.

.Sometimes 'bits' are added to the molecules to give them other properties

:Function of proteins in living organisms

Proteins play many roles in living organisms from the purely structural to catalysis, carriage
.of oxygen, controlling by hormone action, etc., we will concentrate on catalysis as enzymes