BIOC 302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Pentose Phosphate Pathway, Pentose, Nitrogenous Base
Document Summary
The main theme of this course is the central genetic information pathway: We are in midst a genetic revolution that started with the discovery of the dna double helix and recently led us to the complete decoding of the instructional genetic set of human life. Initial attention was on its structure, which is of a linear form. Inheritable units, the genes have roughly the same 3d structure but are radically different in order in term of their building blocks and length. The first goal in our quest to understand molecular biology is to understand the chemistry of the basic structure of the building blocks of nucleic acids. Nucleic acid building blocks consist of a nitrogenous base (purine or pyrimidine), the pentose ribose (d-enantiomer), and a phosphate group (from phosphoric acid). Review terminology as they apply to understanding nucleic acids: anomers, hemiacetal, tautomerization, d vs. l stereochemistry, hydrolysis condensation reactions.
