What is biochemistry
Biochemistry is a branch of science that studies chemical and biological processes in living organisms’ bodies. Body structures, molecules, and cells can be study cases for biochemists.
Biochemistry combines biology and chemistry as it can be recognized by its name easily. Biochemistry experiments are in molecular and cellular scales.
Processes like respiration, hormonal regulation, digestion, and molecules like proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and all body organs functions are being studied by biochemistry.
In addition, biochemists try to discover chemical connections between body organs, structures, molecules, or cells.
How to study biochemistry
Here, you will learn some techniques that will teach you how to study biochemistry; in addition, it will help you study more effectively.
Memorize Amino Acid’s Structures
Memorize 20 types of amino acids that exist in the body is essential to biochemistry studying. Amino acids are building blocks of proteins. Flashcards will fully help you to memorize them as fast as possible.
- Learn their full name and triple letter abbreviations to recognize them while studying.
- Draw the structure of amino acids until they are fixed in your mind. Luckily amino acids have similar designs; the main groups are ( _NH2 ), ( _COOH ), and ( _H ). They are distinguished just by the R group. R group determines the function of each amino acid.
Recognize Proteins Structures
Chains of amino acids make proteins. Proteins have four levels; recognizing these levels and drawing the important ones such as beta sheets and alpha helices is considerable in biochemistry.
There are four levels of proteins below:
- In the primary structure, amino acids bind together by a peptide bond to form a polypeptide.
- In secondary structure, by adding hydrogen bonding, alpha helices and beta sheets occur.
- The tertiary structure is three-dimensional. Hydrogen bonding, peptide bonding, sulfide bonding, and hydrophobic interactions between amino acids cause tertiary structure creation.
- Quaternary structure is created from multiple proteins interactions. It makes more significant protein. At this level, proteins rarely contain subunits and globular.
Learning About Enzymes
Most enzymes in the body are proteins; enzymes are used to increase the body’s processes by lowering the activation energy, called catalyze. For every biochemical process, there’s a specific type of enzyme.
- Enzyme function investigation is one of the fundamental subjects in biochemistry.
- Learning about the function of enzymes and the processes affected by enzymes will help to study biochemistry more easily.
Understanding Differences Between Ionic And Covalent Bonding
Ionic bonding are between two atoms which some electrons from atom A transport to atom B. In other words, positive and negative charged ions attract each other and cause to ionic bond to occur between them.
In covalent bonding, no electron transportation get happened; instead of this, atoms share electrons.
- In addition, other bonding are helpful to learn, such as hydrogen bonds.
- The type of bonding that stick atoms and molecules together determine the properties of the structures. That’s the importance of learning bonding in biochemistry.
Understanding The pH Scale
Using the pH scale, we can measure the acidity of solutions; this scale is from 1 to 14. The number of hydrogen ions (H+) and hydroxide ions (OH-) determine the acidity of every solution.
- More hydrogen ions than hydroxide ions, meaning that the solution is acidic, pH>7.
- More hydroxide ions than hydrogen ions, meaning that the solution is based, pH<7.
Using Ka
Ka is defined for solutions; using this quantity, the extent of acid dissociation can be predictable. Its equation is Ka = [H+][A-]/[HA], you can easily calculate the Ka of every solution that you need.
- Strong acid’s Ka is very small and near to zero (Kaā0).
- Weak acid’s Ka is larger and near to 1 (Kaā1).
Learning Pathways
To being fluent enough in biochemistry, you must study essential Pathways. Photosynthesis, Krebs cycle, glycolysis, and electron transport chain are some of these pathways.
- Read them in detail. Books and animated videos can be helpful.
- You should able to draw them with their wanted details in tests.
- Learn them one by one. It’s imperative to have a clear picture of the pathway and its details in your mind. After that, start to learn the other one. Keep redrawing the course before beginning another.
- Creating quizzes or participating in online quizzes to get a strong foundation of pathways.
- There are cycle-shaped pathways and linear ones, and you can start by memorizing their shape.
- Learn the starting molecules, products, and waste products of each pathway.
- Don’t memorize! Try to get a proper understanding from single everyone part of each pathway. Redrawing and giving quizzes can be helpful
- Information like pathways requires more reviewing than others. Get an ordered plan and review pathways due to it.
Reading Textbooks
Textbooks are essential in every major, and biochemistry is not separated from them. While reading, take notes and use markers to highlight important lines.
Make sure about your completed comprehension of what you read. To get better results, write a summary at the end of the reading.
Write down questions while reading. If you don’t understand or confuse something in the text, write your question and ask it from your teacher. It will help you to face fewer problems in biochemistry.
Flash Cards
There are many new words and vocabularies to learn in biochemistry. Some of these vocabularies are the same, and you should be careful about remembering them correctly.
You can carry them everywhere and use them to review, whenever you want.
How hard is biochemistry
Biochemistry is much easier than a student’s imagination. Whenever students hear the word chemistry, they remember complicated structures or mathematics problems. It’s wondering that biochemistry is easier than chemistry.
Here are some reasons why biochemistry may seem difficult to you:
- If you don’t have any background information such as basic structure, names or functions, and information about how molecules formed, sitting in biochemistry class will be like listening to an unknown language.
- Biochemistry will challenge your memorization skill, and if you aren’t good enough, learning biochemistry will require more time and energy.
- Don’t be hasty! It would help if you had time and many times reviewing and practicing to learn biochemistry very well. Furthermore, it would be hard to understand this significance effectively if you don’t have enough time.
- Undoubtedly, class and teacher are two essential factors in learning every major. Suppose your teacher forces you to solve unnecessary problems while teaching biochemistry. In that case, it causes you to find this significance harder than real.
There are some valuable solutions to avoid the hardship of biochemistry:
- An essential thing is to learn how to study biochemistry. We also explained it and gave you effective ways in this article.
- Choose your studying resources carefully, prepare books due to your level of biochemistry. Pay more attention to which resources your school, university, or teacher have recommended.
- Biochemistry is enjoyable for most of us because it’s a branch of science that will provide you detailed information about what exactly happens in our body.
- Biochemistry is somehow intuitive; you can search for the basis and reasons of each biochemical process by your senses. It’s all about your body.
- Compare with chemistry, it has fewer problems that involve mathematics, so if you aren’t good enough in math, don’t worry. At least you can get over the few math problems in biochemistry.
What is km biochemistry
In 1913 Leonor Michaelis and Maud Menten explained a quantitative theory about enzymes kinetics called Michaelis-Menten kinetics. It explains that how enzyme-catalyzed reactions are affected by the concentration of the enzyme and its substrate.
Two basic terms in Michaelis-Menten kinetics:
- Vmax: The maximum rate of enzyme-catalyzed when all active sites of enzymes have been saturated.
- Km: It is also known as Michaelis constant. The quantity of substrate required to achieve a specific rate of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction is expressed with this constant.
In other words, biochemists can calculate the substrate concentration at which the reaction rate is 50% of the Vmax. Each enzyme has a specific Km.
What is pI biochemistry
PI stands for isoelectronic point. It’s a pH value in which zwitterionic molecules carry no charge. PI is mainly used for proteins. Each of the amino acids in a protein’s structure has a net control affected by the pH of its environment. It’s a key to understanding biochemical problems.
What is residue in biochemistry?
In biochemistry, the residue is called for a specific monomer that shapes the polymeric chain. For example, a residue can be one amino acid in a protein or one monohydrate in starch.
Whenever monomeric building blocks are going to stick with each other by bonds to form a polymeric chain, some molecules (mostly water) is discarded from building blocks, so just residue of each building block will create the final product.
To illustrate this, amino acids are monomeric building blocks for polypeptides. When amino acids want to create peptide bonding between each other to form polypeptides, water molecules are released from each amino acid, at the end only residues from the polypeptide.
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