1.

Essential Elements of Life

• Essential Elements of Life elements that an organism needs to live a healthy life and reproduce.
• About 25 of the 92 elements are essential to life. Include 17-25 different elements, among which
just four elements-oxygen (O), carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and nitrogen
(N)-make up 96% of living matter. Most of the remaining 4% consists of Calcium (Ca), phosphorus
(P), potassium (K), and sulfur (S). (some even at trace amount).
• Trace elements (nguyen to vi luong) are required by an organism
in only minute quantities (making up less than 0.01% of human
body weight).
• Minerals such as Fe and Zn are trace elements. They are needed
by all forms of life.
• Example: An iodine deficiency in the diet causes the thyroid
gland (tuyen giap) to grow to abnormal size, a condition called
goiter (buou co).
• Nitrogen deficiency in plants yellow leaves, Flowering, fruitings,
protein and starch contents are reduced.
2. What are Macromolecules?
• All living things are made up of four classes of large biological
molecules: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.
• Within cells, small organic molecules are joined together to form larger molecules.
• Macromolecules are large molecules composed of thousands of covalently connected atoms.
• Molecular structure and function are inseparable.
• A polymer is a long molecule consisting of many similar or identical building blocks linked by
covalent bonds, much as a train consists of a chain of cars.
• The repeating units that serve as the building blocks of a polymer are smaller molecules called
monomers.

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3. Storage Polysaccharides
• Starch, a storage polysaccharide of plants, consists entirely of glucose monomers.
• Plants store surplus starch as granules within chloroplasts and other plastids.
• Glycogen is a storage polysaccharide in animals.
• Humans and other vertebrates store glycogen mainly in liver and muscle cells.
4. Phospholipids
• In a phospholipid, which has only two fatty acids and a phosphate group is attached to glycerol.
• The two fatty acid tails are hydrophobic, but the phosphate group and its attachments form a
hydrophilic head
• When phospholipids are added to water, they self-assemble into double-layered structures called
bilayers, with the hydrophobic tails pointing toward the interior.
• The structure of phospholipids results in a bilayer arrangement found in cell membranes
• Phospholipids are the major component of all cell membranes

5. Quaternary structure of Protein including Collagen and Hemoglobin

• Quaternary structure results when a protein consists of multiple polypeptide chains
• Quaternary structure results when two or more polypeptide chains form one macromolecule
• Collagen is a fibrous protein consisting of three identical helical polypeptides coiled like a rope.
• Hemoglobin is a globular protein consisting of four polypeptides: two alpha and two beta chains.
6. Cell Fractionation (phan doan te bao)
• Cell fractionation takes cells apart and separates the major organelles from one another.
• Ultracentrifuges fractionate cells into their component parts.
• Cell fractionation enables scientists to determine the functions of organelles.
• Biochemistry and cytology help correlate cell function with structure.

7. Comparing Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Cells (Tế bào nhân sơ và tế bào nhân thực)

• The basic structural and functional unit of every organism is one of two types of cells: prokaryotic or
eukaryotic
• Prokaryotic cells are characterized by having:

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 o No nucleus.

o DNA in an unbound region called the nucleoid.

o No membrane-bound organelles.

o Cytoplasm bound by the plasma membrane (Tế bào chất được kết dính với màng sinh chất).

• Eukaryotic cells are characterized by having:

o DNA in a nucleus that is bounded by a membranous nuclear envelope.

o Membrane-bound organelles.

o Cytoplasm in the region between the plasma membrane and nucleus.

• Eukaryotic cells are generally much larger than prokaryotic cells.

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8. Catabolic Pathways and Production of ATP
Catabolic Pathways

• Catabolic pathways or breakdown pathways release energy by breaking down complex molecules
into simpler compounds.

• Cellular respiration, the sugar glucose, and other organic fuels are broken down in the presence of
oxygen to carbon dioxide and water, is an example of a pathway of catabolism.

Production of ATP
Catabolic pathways that require oxygen (to break down complex molecules to release stored energy)
Overall respiration process:
Organic compounds + O2 => CO2+H20 + Energy(in form of ATP)
Cellular respiration has three stages:
• Glycolysis (breaks down glucose into two molecules of pyruvate)
• The citric acid cycle (completes the breakdown of glucose)
• Oxidative phosphorylation (accounts for most of the ATP synthesis)
The process that generates most of the ATP is called oxidative phosphorylation because it is powered by
redox reactions.
A smaller amount of ATP is formed in glycolysis and the citric acid cycle by substrate-level
phosphorylation

9. Chloroplasts: The Sites of Photosynthesis in Plants

• In eukaryotes (plants and algae), photosynthesis occurs in chloroplasts.
• Leaves are the major locations of photosynthesis.
• Their green color is from chlorophyll, the green pigment within chloroplasts.
• Light energy absorbed by chlorophyll drives the synthesis of organic molecules in the chloroplast.
• CO2 enters and O2 exits the leaf through microscopic pores called stomata.
• Chloroplasts are found mainly in cells of the mesophyll, the interior tissue of the leaf.
• A typical mesophyll cell has 30–40 chloroplasts. A chloroplast has contain stroma, a dense fluid.
• The chlorophyll is in the membranes of thylakoids (connected sacs in the chloroplast); thylakoids
may be stacked in columns called grana.
10. The Genetic Code

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 • Genetic information
– Is encoded as a sequence of non-overlapping base triplets, or codons.
• During transcription
– The gene determines the sequence of bases along the length of an mRNA molecule that is
being synthesized.
• The triplet code:
For each gene, one DNA strand functions as a template for transcription. The base-pairing rules for
DNA synthesis also guide transcription, but uracil (U) takes the place of thymine (T) in RNA. During
translation, the mRNA is read as a sequence of base triplets. called codons. Each codon specifies an
amino acid to be added to the growing polypeptide chain. The mRNA is read in the 5' > 3' direction.