Chemical Reactions and the Molecules of Life - I just finished eating breakfast, which today consisted of a glass of low-fat milk and French toast covered with peanut butter and syrup. (I happen to like peanut butter on my pancakes and French toast you should try it.) How do we as living things break this meal down into its constituent parts and reconstitute or assimilate the chemical components into ourselves?
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| Chemical Reaction (source: http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/atweights.gif) |
Although my breakfast consisted of the things I just mentioned, to the biological system that is my body, my meal consisted of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins, the large molecular constructions that are found in all foods. It also contained water, minerals, and nucleic acids. The cells of my body and of other living things do not distinguish between a meal of insects or of steak. Protein is protein, and it will be broken down into the amino acids that make up that protein. The amino acids will eventually enter my cells and be reunited into new amino acid sequences that form the protein in my cells.
How does nature degrade, or break down, large molecules into their component subunits? And how does nature take these component subunits and reunite them to form other complex molecules?
To begin with, all these activities are chemical reactions; so in order to answer our questions, we must first understand how chemical reactions take place.
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