BIOL 1020 - Organic Molecules

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering water's emergent properties, carbon chemistry, functional groups, and biological macromolecules from BIOL 1020.

Cohesion

An emergent property of water where water molecules stick to other water molecules due to hydrogen bonding.

Adhesion

An emergent property of water where water molecules stick to different substances or cell walls, such as water-conducting plant tissues.

Surface Tension

A measure of the difficulty of stretching or breaking the surface of a liquid, resulting from the cohesive hydrogen bonding between water molecules.

Heat Capacity

The property of water that enables it to absorb large amounts of heat with relatively small changes in temperature, helping to moderate environmental temperatures.

Evaporative Cooling

The cooling of a surface that occurs as liquid water evaporates, leaving behind cooler molecules with lower kinetic energy.

Versatile Solvent

The capacity of water to dissolve a wide array of solutes, including charged ions and larger polar molecules, by forming hydration shells around them.

Carbon

The foundational element forming the backbone of all organic compounds, possessing $4$ valence electrons and the ability to form $4$ covalent bonds.

Hydrocarbon

An organic molecule composed exclusively of carbon and hydrogen atoms, forming molecular backbones configured as chains, rings, or complex compounds.

Estradiol

A female sex steroid hormone that shares a common carbon skeleton with cholesterol and testosterone but possesses distinct functional groups, including a hydroxyl group on an aromatic ring.

Testosterone

A male sex steroid hormone that differs structurally from estradiol by possessing a carbonyl group ($C=O$) and an extra methyl group ($-CH_3$).

Hydroxyl Group

A highly polar functional group consisting of $-OH$; characteristic of alcohols, it increases water solubility and serves as a reactive site for assembling larger molecules.

Carbonyl Group

A functional group composed of a carbon atom double-bonded to an oxygen atom ($C=O$); found within ketones and aldehydes.

Carboxyl Group

A functional group ($-COOH$) found in carboxylic acids and organic acids that tends to donate protons to aqueous solutions, becoming negatively charged as $-COO^-$.

Amino Group

A functional group ($-NH_2$) characteristic of amines that acts as a base by removing protons from aqueous solutions, becoming positively charged as $-NH_3^+$.

Sulfhydryl Group

A functional group consisting of $-SH$; found in thiols, two sulfhydryl groups can react covalently with each other to establish a disulfide bond.

Phosphate Group

A functional group present in organic phosphates and inorganic phosphate ($P_i$) that participates in high-energy bonding and regulates protein function.

Methyl Group

A nonpolar functional group consisting of $-CH_3$; found in methylated compounds, it acts to modulate DNA and gene function.

Dehydration Reaction

A chemical reaction in which two molecules join covalently with the accompanying loss of a water molecule ($H_2O$), with one molecule donating an $-OH$ and the other an $-H$.

Hydrolysis

A cleavage reaction that breaks covalent bonds in polymers to yield monomer subunits through the addition of a water molecule ($H_2O$).

Simple Sugars

Monomeric carbohydrate units (monosaccharides) that serve as building blocks for polysaccharide macromolecules.

Glycerol

A three-carbon alcohol with three hydroxyl groups that combines with fatty acids to construct lipid macromolecules.

Amino Acid

The monomer building block of proteins, consisting of a central carbon atom bonded to an amino group, a carboxyl group, a hydrogen atom, and a variable $R$ group.

Nucleotide

The monomeric building block of nucleic acids, consisting of a phosphate group, a five-carbon sugar, and a nitrogenous base.

Polysaccharide

A biological macromolecule composed of repeated simple sugar monomers linked by covalent bonds formed via dehydration reactions.