Structures and functions of Biomolecules||Examples of biomolecules Lipids

Structure and functions of biomolecules,examples of biomolecules lipids.If you are searching about biomolecules then you are  at right place.Here you will find lipids their functions and classification.

 Structures and functions of Biomolecules||Examples of biomolecules Lipids

  lipids would be the fats and oils that you've seen in everyday life these include fatty acids, triglycerides phospholipids, steroids, waxes, and terpenes. prostaglandins and things like that now lipids are nonpolar which means that they're mostly hydrophobic that is they don't mix well with water hydro means water fulvic means fear and they try to stay away from more now lipids are mostly made up of carbon-hydrogen bonds. They're hydrocarbons now they may contain other elements like oxygen and sometimes nitrogen in the case of phospholipids and phosphorus too but for the most part, they contain mostly CH bonds and CH bonds are nonpolar and it's because of the CH bonds that lipids are hydrophobic that they don't mix well with water. Now lipids such as triglycerides they're very useful for long-term energy storage if you're fast and if you're not eating for more than a day or so after your body burns out all the carbs the next thing that it looks for are the triglycerides in your system. The lipids and uses enzymes such as lipase to break down triglycerides into fatty acids and glycerol so that your body can derive energy from these molecules so they're very useful for long-term energy storage. Your body can go days without food as long as you have water you can go many days about food. Because of these triglyceride molecules, they're very effective in stored energy in fact they can store more than twice. The amount of energy compared to carbohydrates. Now lipids also play a major role in the cellular membrane in fact the cell membrane is mostly made up of phospholipids. Now lipids also provide thermal insulation and protection so they're very useful in the winter. When he gets cold but now let's talk about each of these lipids one at a time.

Classification of lipids.

1.Fatty acids

Fatty acids are long chains of hydrocarbons that contain a carboxylic acid functional group at the end. So here is an example of a fatty acid so this right here represents a carbon atom and those carbon atoms contain hydrogen atoms keep my carbon can only form four bonds. So the carbon atoms in the middle have two hydrogen atoms whereas the one at the end possesses three hydrogen atoms. If fatty acid is mostly made up of hydrocarbons the carboxylic acid portion of fatty acid is the polar part so this is the part that likes water that's the the hydrophilic part and the tail of the fatty acid is the nonpolar part so that is the hydrophobic part. The part that doesn't like water now this type of fatty acid is known as a saturated fatty acid. It's saturated in that it contains the maximum number of hydrogen atoms that you can pack on this molecule and there are no double bonds saturated fatty acids are solid at room temperature. A good example of this will be butter an

 unsaturated fatty acid

Has a double bond.So it looks something like this because of the presence of the double bond.There's a kink in the structure this molecule it bends so that's an example of an unsaturated fatty acid for every dumb-blonde present you lose two hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated fatty acids tend to be liquid at room temperature so these would include the vegetable oils. Now another type of unsaturated fatty acid are the trans fatty acid in this configuration we have a syst double bond.Because the hydrogen atoms across the carbons that are double bonded on the same side of the double bond in a trans fatty acid the hydrogen atoms on the double bonds are on opposite sides. So that's an example of a trans unsaturated fatty acid.

human lipid bilayer

2.Triglycerides

 A three-carbon molecule called glycerol. Glycerol has three hydroxyl groups and we're going to react it with three fatty acids first fatty acid is a saturated fatty acid the second one is the mono unsaturated fatty acid. Because we only have one double bond when you have multiple double bonds you have a polyunsaturated fatty acid a triglyceride is composed of three fatty acid molecules and one glycerol molecule.Now to make it we need a dehydration synthesis reaction so we're going to lose water. These molecules will be dehydrated due to the loss of water so we're gonna lose three water molecules and then we're going to synthesize a larger compound. So it's a dehydration synthesis process and this will produce a triglyceride.Now might have lost track of the number of carbon atoms I had at the beginning but I just want to show you the general shape of a triglyceride.So this is an example of a triglyceride so this molecule is very useful for long-term energy storage that's one of its major functions you can pack a lot of energy into this molecule. The triglyceride is nonpolar it doesn't mix well with water. It doesn't have the polar hydroxyl groups so it can't hydrogen bond with water so to review in order to make a triglyceride we need to react glycerol with three fatty acids and that's gonna make the triglyceride producing three water molecules and that is a dehydration synthesis reaction .But now we can also go backward. If we want the reaction between water and the triglyceride can produce glycerol and the three fatty acids going backward the reaction is called a hydrolysis reaction hydro means water lysis means to split apart so we're splitting apart the triglyceride into its components glycerol and the fatty acids.

 

3.Phospholipids

These are lipids with a phosphate group so a phospholipid is made up of a phosphate group a glycerol molecule and two fatty acid chains in this example we have a saturated fatty acid and an unsaturated fatty acid the R group does contain a nitrogen atom by the way just in case you have a test question on that. So phospholipids contain carbon hydrogen oxygen phosphorus and nitrogen.Phospholipids make up the cell membrane.phospholipid has a polar head and two nonpolar tails the kink that you see in the structure is due to the presence of this double bond and the unsaturated.The phosphate group is polar so it likes water so that's the part that's gonna be facing the water the two fatty acid tails.They don't like water so this is the hydrophobic region of the cell membrane that's the part that wants to stay away from water so this would be the inside of the cell which is aqueous,. It has water in it and this is outside of the cell but the membrane of its own in the  interior is hydrophobic.

4. Steroids

Steroids contain four fuse drinks as you can see in the examples listed here

5 . cholesterol 

Cholesterole is used to maintain the fluidity of the cell membrane on the upper right we have estradiol which is a type of estrogen.The primary female sex hormone on a bottom left we have testosterone which is an androgen and that is the primary male sex hormone estrogen and testosterone. They're chemically similar besides both having estradiol and testosterone is chemically similar besides both having four fused rings estradiol and testosterone. Both have this hydroxyl group is at the top but estradiol really stands out due to the presence of this aromatic ring which is not present in testosterone.Or in cholesterol cortisol is another steroid hormone that is used to reduce inflammation by suppressing the immune system. Now let's say if you're stressed out you have a lot of exams to study for when your stress levels are high your cortisol levels will be high as well. Now when used as a medication cortisol is known as hydrocortisone.

 

6.waxes

Waxes are nonpolar they don't mix well with water  waxes contain very long alkyl chains as you can see in this picture above but they can have many different functional groups here we have a paraffin wax with 31 carbon atoms the functional group is now Kane and now Kane is an organic molecule that only contains carbon and hydrogen. It doesn't have any double bonds so it's a saturated compound below we have a wax ester we still have two long alkyl chains but we do have an ester functional group so it's called a wax ester .This one has 32 carbon atoms and 64 hydrogen atoms so these are very very long hydrophobic molecules some examples of waxes include beeswax I'm sure you've heard of that one of the waxes that plant used to code themselves in order to regulate evaporation and hydration . candles

Candles are made up of waxes specifically the paraffin wax waxes have very high melting points. This particular paraffin wax has a melting point of 99 degrees of Fahrenheit and its Bolin point it's 698 degrees Fahrenheit so at room temperature waxes are solids. But if you raise the temperature you can melt them into a liquid.

7.Terpenes

The basic unit of a terpene is isoprene. Isoprene has five carbon atoms and it's a dying whenever you see the suffix een that tells you that it's an alkene. It has a double bond dye means two so a dyeing is a substance with two double bonds trying would be three double bonds other examples of terpenes include mersin and Lamoni which is found in appeals of citrus fruits and then we have beta carotene so this is found in carrots. Mersin has 10 carbon atoms so therefore it has to it's made up of two isoprene units so terpenes typically have carbon atoms that are multiples of five.