Esters, Lipids, Amides, Peptides And Proteins By Inquisition

Following the first five animated workbooks from By Inquisition (Organic Chemistry Concepts, Introductory Organic Mechanisms, Organic Spectroscopy and Spectrometry, Additions Of Alcohols And Amines To Aldehydes And Ketones, and Aromaticity, Heterocycles, Nucleosides And Nucleotides) this is the first opportunity to introduce esters and amides from perspective of life science majors. Chapters are: (i) esters (hydrolysis and formation); (ii) lipids; (iii) amides (hydrolysis and formation): (iv) activation of acids; (v) amino acids; (vi) peptide syntheses; and, (vii) peptides and proteins. These topics lead to esters in biology (eg esterases, digestion and aceyl choline); proteases and inhibitors. The chapter on lipids is full of material to interest life science majors: triglycerides, phospholipids, steroids (a bit of sex), terpenes, cholesterol biosyntheses, statins, waxes and prostaglandins. I tell my students, sincerely, many of them will die of heart disease, mostly from atherosclerosis, and some of them have already started to accumulate atherosclerotic plaque. Amides lead to activation of acids and the pivotal role of mixed anhydrides in this (not stressed in most undergraduate texts), then how these are applied to peptide syntheses in solution and on solid phases. I then students should learn their genetically encoded amino acids in sophomore organic, and shows them how in the chapter introducing amino acids. Finally, the proteins chapter deals with methods for primary sequence determination (proteolysis or cyanogen bromide then MS, Edmann), what 1°, 2°, 3°, 4° protein structures are. This leads to introducing the types of polymer chemistry that life science majors need most: composition of gels for electrophoresis. This gives a chance to illustrate the importance of pI values, which otherwise might be meaningless. The proteins chapters ends with a brief discussion of antibodies and western blotting. All this is in line with the theme of this series: chemistry of the major biomolecules introduced early and revisited often. Like all the others, this module is animated with videos (many, but not all, by me), interleaved with problems to encourage students to understand by practice. The intention is students should watch videos as they are introduced in the book, then try to answer the problems covering theory and applications of each subject. All the videos linked to in this book are freely available on YouTube. They can be viewed within the etext protecting students from the temptation from distraction by clicking on videos on other things. This eworkbook is designed to challenge undergraduates so they can handle even difficult questions on exams and the final; books of easy problems are available from others elsewhere. Answers to all the problems are online at byinquisition.org.