What are the importance of biomolecules?

What are the importance of biomolecules?

Biomolecules

The living organisms make an organic molecule which is known as biomolecule. It helps in carrying important tasks and is the building block of life. Biomolecules are made of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, oxygen and Sulphur. There are four common types of biomolecules which are proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acid, and lipids.

Proteins

The living organisms have essential substances and they are derived from any class of nitrogenous organic compounds which have large molecules made up of many long chains of amino acids.

The proteins are made of amino acids which are the building blocks. There are about 22 amino acids made up of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Therefore, one amino acid is made up of the amino group, hydrogen atom, carboxyl group, and distinctive side chain which bonds with the alpha-carbon.

• Some of the important sources of protein are milk, cheese, fish, Meats and peanuts.
• The building blocks of protein are amino acids.
• Proteins are polymers of amino acids.
• Amono acids consists of amino (-NH2), and carboxyl (-COOH) functional groups.
• According to the position of amino group in relation to carboxyl group, the amino acids can be divided as and so on.
• We get acids on hydrolysis of proteins.

The amino acids occur in the form of dipolar ions or zwitterion in solutions when they get dissolved in water. They behave as proton donors or proton acceptors.

Zwitterion

All amino acids rotate along the plane based on the polarized light and are optically active. They contain chiral carbon except for glycine. A chiral carbon consists of four different constituents in a tetrahedral carbon atom.

Two or more amino acids make a peptide and are linked through the peptide bond to form a dipeptide. When three amino acids combine together, they form a tripeptide. When 12 to 20 amino acids combine together, an oligopeptide chain is formed. When many amino acids combine together, they from polypeptides. The first amino acid in the polypeptide chain is called as the Nterminal or amino terminal and the last amino acid in the polypeptide chain is called the C terminal or carboxyl terminal.

Protein structure

Thestages of protein organization in proteinsare:

1. Primary structure: In this structure, the proteins have the amino acids sequence that is joined together by a peptide bond.
2. Secondary structure: In this structure, the proteins are organized in a higher-level having alpha-helix and the beta sheets. They are both stabilized due to the presence of hydrogen bonds in between the carbonyl and N-H groups in a polypeptide backbone.
3. Alpha helix- When a polypeptide chain twists, it becomes a rigid, rod-like structure that changes onto a helical conformation.
4. Beta pleated- The arrangement of two or more polypeptide chain segments lying side by side becomes a sheet, and every chain segment is called as beta-strand.
5. Tertiary structures- It is a three-dimensional structure of protein which happens between the primary structure and its side chains. In order to stabilize them, it needs hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions, van der Waals forces, and covalent bonds.
6. Quaternary structures- It consists of two or more polypeptide chains which combine together with the help of hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions. For example, hemoglobin.
7. Fibrous and globular proteins- They are long, rod-shaped molecules which are insoluble in water and are structural and protective in nature. The globular proteins are soluble in water and are made up of spherical shaped molecules.

Nucleic acids- The first person to discover nucleic acid from the nuclei of pus cells was Friedrich Miescher. The nucleic acids are of two kinds. They are deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA0 and ribonucleic acids (RNA).

In nucleic acid, the nucleosides are the monomeric unit made of three constituents- a nitrogenous base, a five-carbon sugar, and phosphoric acid.

The nitrogenous bases are aromatic molecules consisting of heterocyclic structure. There are two types of nucleic acids. They are purines and pyrimidines.

Purines are of two kinds- adinine and guanine. pyrimidines are of three kinds- thymine, cystosine, or uracil.

DNA is deoxyribose having 5-carbon sugar while RNA is ribose. When nucleoside is present with phosphate, it is known as the nucleotide.

Know how to solve this question:

Which of the following compound is found in acid soluble pool during analysis of a living tissue?

1. A) protein
2. B) Lipid
3. C) polysaccharide
4. D) monosaccharide

Structure of Double-Stranded DNA

There are two types of DNA. They are:

B DNA

• The two strands of the long polynucleotide are coiled around the axis.
• Nucleoside adenine base combines thymine. Guanine base combines with cytosine.
• Between adenine and thymine, two hydrogen bonds are formed while three hydrogen bonds are formed between guanine and cytosine.

Z DNA

• The structure of this DNA is thin.
• The purine and pyrimidine bases are arranged in alternate ways.
• The DNA has high salt concentration to stabilize the structure.

Denaturation of DNA

Denaturation can be defined as a condition when two strands of DNA divides while coming in contact with the varying pH temperature.