Three major Themes

I hope you have enjoyed the discussions in my blog to this point, unfortunately this is my last blog entry. That being said we covered a lot of material this semester and if I had to pick 3 themes that wove there way through the material, I would pick:


1) The unique properties of water

2) Oxidation reactions

3) Reduction reactions


The unique properties of water are not only essential to biochemistry, but are essential to all of life. Chapter 2 of the text introduces us to the unique properties of water which included waters ability to act as a solvent, form hydrogen bonds, and act as an acid or base. These concepts were important to learn as they continued to appear throughout the semester.

Hydrogen bonding became a major instrument of the three dimensional structures of proteins. It was also a major theme of general chemistry as well as organic as it was a major predictor of a molecules tendency to react with other molecules.

Oxidation reactions involve the loss of electrons via a reducing agent. These reactions where discussed in chapter 17 of the text in the glycolysis cycle, specifically reaction 6. In this reaction the -CHO group of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate is oxidized to a carboxyl group.

Reduction reaction comes hand in hand with oxidation reaction but, reduction reaction involves the gain of electrons. These reactions are happening at the same time as the oxidation reactions and can also be found in rxn 6 of the glycolysis cycle. NAD+ gets reduced to NADH.

Both reaction are key components of general chemistry and are involve in reaction such as the oxidation of copper to copper ion and the reduction of silver.