Certificate in Biological molecules

Explore biomolecules, including carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, vitamins, water, and minerals, and how they fuel cells, store genetic information, regulate processes, and defend against pathogens.

Explore macromolecules, including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids, and how monomers like amino acids, monosaccharides, and nucleotides polymerize into polypeptides and polysaccharides.

Join monomers to form polymers via dehydration synthesis, creating covalent bonds and releasing water as a byproduct while producing long polymer chains.

Explore polymer breakdown, or hydrolysis, where water splits polymers into monomers, enabling recycling in living organisms and industry, with enzymes accelerating the reaction and ensuring substrate specificity.

Explore carbohydrates, a vital class of organic molecules that provide energy and form structural components. They comprise carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in two-to-one ratio and include monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides.

Explore how carbohydrates provide energy through glucose and ATP, store glycogen for quick fuel, build structures with cellulose and chitin, and enable cell communication via glycoproteins and glycolipids.

Delve into monosaccharides, the single-unit building blocks of carbohydrates, examining their structure and carbon-based classification. Learn how glucose, ribose, and fructose power energy, store genetic information, and enable cell communication.

Discover examples of monosaccharides, including glucose, fructose, galactose, ribose, and deoxyribose, and explain their roles in energy production, RNA and DNA, and metabolism.

Explore disaccharides, double sugars formed by two monosaccharides linked via a glycosidic bond through dehydration synthesis, with maltose and lactose as key examples for nutrition and metabolism.

Explore disaccharides with examples: sucrose (glucose + fructose) from sugar cane; lactose (glucose + galactose) in milk; and maltose (two glucose) from starch digestion.

Explore polysaccharides, macromolecules of monosaccharides linked by glycosidic bonds, including starch and glycogen as storage forms of glucose in plants and animals, with amylose, amylopectin, and glycogen's branching.

Explore cellulose, a plant polysaccharide that provides structural support in cell walls through linear beta-1,4 linked glucose chains forming strong fibrils, while serving as dietary fiber that humans cannot digest.

Explore the diverse lipids, their insolubility in water and solubility in nonpolar solvents such as chloroform and benzene, and their roles in energy storage, membranes, hormones, and protection.

Explore how lipids store energy long term, insulate and cushion organs, form cell membranes, and act as chemical messengers through steroids and hormones.

Explore fatty acids as lipid building blocks, examining carboxyl group and hydrocarbon chains, compare saturated and unsaturated types, and note solid or liquid states and LDL cholesterol health effects.

Explore dry glycerides, or neutral fats, as the primary energy storage molecules. Learn glycerol bonded to three fatty acids and how saturated versus unsaturated fats influence storage, insulation, and metabolism.

Explore how phospholipids build cell membranes with a hydrophilic head and hydrophobic tails, form bilayers, and support transport, structure, and cellular communication.

Explore steroids, a class of lipids with a ring structure derived from cholesterol, and their role as chemical messengers and hormone precursors. Identify cholesterol, testosterone, and estrogen as key examples.

This lecture introduces proteins as versatile life molecules built from 20 standard amino acids linked by peptide bonds into polypeptide chains, detailing primary, secondary, tertiary, and catenary structures.

Explore how structural proteins like keratin and collagen support tissue integrity, while actin, myosin, enzymes, hemoglobin, transport proteins, antibodies, and insulin regulate movement, transport, and defense.

Explore how amino acids build proteins through dehydration synthesis, forming dipeptides and polypeptides, whose folding creates unique three-dimensional structures that determine protein function.

Explore the four hierarchical protein structures—from primary amino acid sequence to secondary alpha helix and beta sheet, tertiary folding, and quaternary subunit assembly—and how hydrogen bonds shape function.

Explore how denaturing proteins alters their three-dimensional structure and abolishes activity, driven by pH changes, temperature, chemicals, and heavy metals, with examples like heating an egg and milk curdling.

Explore nucleic acids, including DNA and RNA, as the molecular blueprints that store, transmit, and express genetic information and guide protein synthesis.

Explore how DNA stores and transmits genetic information through nucleotides with deoxyribose, phosphate, and the bases adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine in a double helix.

Explore the structure and function of RNA, a single-stranded molecule with a ribose-phosphate backbone that carries genetic information from DNA to ribosomes, enabling protein synthesis and regulation.

Compare the structural and functional differences between DNA and RNA, including sugar, bases, and forms, and their roles in replication, transcription, translation, and gene regulation via RNA interference.

Explore how ATP serves as the universal energy currency, powering muscle contraction, active transport, and DNA replication, RNA transcription, and protein synthesis through hydrolysis.