Biological molecules, carbohydrates

Hydrates of Small Biological Molecules Carbohydrates, Amino Acids, Peptides, Purines, Pyrimidines, Nucleosides and Nucleotides... 

Kennedy JF and Zamir A. Use of cellulose xanthate for immobilization of biological molecules. Carbohydr. Res. 1975 41 227-233. 

The overall scope of this book is the implementation and application of available theoretical and computational methods toward understanding the structure, dynamics, and function of biological molecules, namely proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and membranes. The large number of computational tools already available in computational chemistry preclude covering all topics, as Schleyer et al. are doing in The Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry [23]. Instead, we have attempted to create a book that covers currently available theoretical methods applicable to biomolecular research along with the appropriate computational applications. We have designed it to focus on the area of biomolecular computations with emphasis on the special requirements associated with the treatment of macromolecules. 

Biochemistry is carbonyl chemistiy. Almost all metabolic pathways used by living organisms involve one or more of the four fundamental carbonvl-group reactions we ve seen in Chapters 19 through 23. The digestion and metabolic breakdown of all the major classes of food molecules—fats, carbohydrates, and proteins—take place by nucleophilic addition reactions, nucleophilic acyl substitutions, a substitutions, and carbonyl condensations. Similarly, hormones and other crucial biological molecules are built up from smaller precursors by these same carbonyl-group reactions. 

Glycoconjugate (Section 25.6) A biological molecule in which a carbohydrate is linked through a glycoside bond to a lipid or protein. 

Carbohydrates and other biological molecules that contain polysaccharides, such as glycoproteins, can be specifically modified at their sugar residues to produce reactive formyl functionalities. With proteins, this method often allows modification to occur only at specific locals, usually away from critical active centers or binding sites. 

In this section, you learned how to recognize addition and condensation polymerization reactions. You examined the structures and functions of several important biological molecules, such as proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, DNA, and lipids. In the next section, you will examine the risks and benefits of manufacturing and using organic compounds. 

Many of the molecules that make up living organisms are polymers, including DNA, proteins, the cellulose of plants, and the complex carbohydrates of starchy foods. We leave a discussion of these important biological molecules to Chapter 13. For now, we focus on the human-made polymers, also known as synthetic polymers, that make up the class of materials commonly known as plastics. 

One of the most important problems that has been actively studied during the past few years is the hydration of biological molecules, especially carbohydrates, and the effect of hydration on the conformation of the solute molecule, as well as the effect of the latter on the water structure. Different theoretical and experimental methods have been utilized, and the discrepancies between the results, expressed as numbers of hydration, are considerable. In addition, the water molecule is a reactant in a number of biochemical reactions. The kinetics of these reactions is influenced both by the conformation of the carbohydrate and the structure of the water. These questions will be discussed, with particular reference to the contribution of the vibrational, spectroscopic information to an understanding of such complex mechanisms. 

Biological Reactions. Biosynthesis and catabolism of biological molecules (amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, peptides/proteins), metabolic cycles, biological catalysis and kinetics, mechanisms, organic and inorganic cofactors. 

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