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BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE
FOURTH EDITION
SCOTT FREEMAN
Lectures by Stephanie Scher Pandolfi
2011 Pearson Education, Inc.
Key Concepts
Sugars and other carbohydrates are highly variable in structure. Monosaccharides are monomers that polymerize to form polymers called polysaccharides, and are joined by different types of glycosidic linkages. Carbohydrates perform a wide variety of functions in cells: serving as raw material for synthesizing other molecules, providing structural support, indicating cell identity, and storing chemical energy.
The simplest polysaccharides are disaccharides, comprised of two monosaccharide monomers. The monomers can be identical or different. Simple sugars polymerize when a condensation reaction occurs between two hydroxyl groups, resulting in a covalent bond called a glycosidic linkage.
Glycosidic Linkages
The glycosidic linkages can form between any two hydroxyl groups; thus, the location and geometry of these bonds vary widely.
Types of Polysaccharides
1. Plants store sugar as starch. Mixture of branched (amylopectin) and unbranched (amylose) -glucose polymer 2. Animals store sugar as glycogen. Highly branched -glucose polymer 3. Cellulose is a structural polymer found in plant cell walls. Polymer of -glucose monomers 4. Chitin is a structural polymer found in fungi cell walls, some algae, and many animal exoskeletons. Comprised of N-acetylglucosamine (NAc) monomers 5. Bacterial cell walls get structural support from peptidoglycan. Backbones of alternating monosaccharides
2011 Pearson Education, Inc.
These strands may then be organized into fibers or layered in sheets to give cells and organisms great strength and elasticity.
Unlike the -glycosidic linkages in the storage polysaccharides, the -1,4-glycosidic linkages of structural carbohydrates are very difficult to hydrolyze very few enzymes have active sites that accommodate their geometry or have the reactive groups necessary.