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Atoms, bonds, molecules and

macromiolecules
1. What do we mean by the term chemical evolution? How does it differ from
biological evolution?
2. What is the relationship between chemical evolution and biological evolution?
3. What is the general structure of an atom? What are in the nucleus? What are in
the orbits?
4. Which components give weight (mass) to an atom? Which component specifies an
element?
5. If an atom has 22 protons and 25 neutrons, will you be able to draw the structure of
this atom including electrons in their shells?

6. What is the valence shell? How many valence electrons should be in the above
atom?
7. How do electronegativities of atoms determine the type of covalent bonds they
make?
8. Can you recall the most electronegative atom that we see in biological molecules?
9. Why do we say that a covalent bond formed between carbon and hydrogen, is nonpolar?
10. What type of bond is found in highly hydrophobic molecules?
11. What are hydrophilic molecules? What type of bond is found in highly hydrophilic
molecules?
12. Can you draw two water molecules and label polar covalent bonds and hydrogen
bonds?
13. How do you distinguish between covalent bonds and ionic bonds?
A hydrogen bond is somewhat comparable to a covalent bond or a weak ionic
bond?
14. If you try to recreate the chemical evolution in the current atmosphere, will it
work?

15. What makes carbon an ideal atom to be the basis of life?

Why are there many different functional groups in different biological molecules?
16. What are the building blocks of proteins?
17. Identify the groups attached to the central carbon
atom of this molecule.
18. When amino acids join to make polypeptides, what is the name of the bond
formed?
19. This bond forms between which groups of the two amino acids?
20. What are;
Polymerization reactions?
Condensation reactions?
Dehydration reactions?
Hydrolysis reactions?
21. How do you know if an amino acid has hydrophilic properties?
22. What is the difference between the terms polypeptide and protein?
23. If a polypeptide needs one part to be hydrophilic and the other part to be
hydrophobic, how does
it achieve this?
24. How many different amino acids are involved in making proteins?
25. What are the two main criteria that make one polypeptide different from another?
a.
b.
26. Can you define primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structures of proteins.

27. Alpha helices and beta sheets are part of which level of protein structure?
28. What bonds maintain the primary structure?
29. What bonds hold secondary structures?
30. What are the four types of bonds/forces that maintain the tertiary structure of a
folded polypeptide?
31. The abbreviation DNA stands for =>
32. Similarly, RNA means =>
33. Nucleotides are the _______________________________ that build DNA and RNA
polymers.
34. What are the three parts of a nucleotide?

35. What is the difference between the sugars present in DNA and RNA? Why is this
difference
important in nature?
36. Fill this in:
Pyrimidines
in DNA
_________________________________
____________________________________
in RNA
_________________________________
____________________________________

Purines

37. What is the name of the bond formed between nucleotides when they
polymerize?
38. What common feature you find between this bond in nucleic acids and the
peptide bond formed between amino acids?
39. What does it mean by 5 and 3 sides of nucleic acids? How does this matter in
nucleotide polymerization?
40. How do primary structures of nucleic acids and polypeptides compare?
41. The secondary structure of DNA is a ___________________________________ .
In this
model, the two DNA strands are linked to each other by _______________________ bonds
between nitrogenous bases on opposite strands. The purine base A always bonds
with the pyrimidine base ________ while the purine base G always bonds with the
pyrimidine base ___________ .
42. Why do we say that the two DNA strands in the double helix are anti-parallel?
44. What are the typical secondary structures we see in RNA?
45. List 4 structural differences between DNA and RNA
43. What is the general formula for carbohydrates?
44. Find and learn it well: Do you know the difference between hydrocarbons and
carbohydrates? What is the big difference in polarity of molecules that belong to
these two groups?
45. What does it mean by prefixes mono, di, oligo, and poly ? How does this
apply to the types of carbohydrates?
46. A hexose sugar has _______ carbon atoms, while a _________________ sugar has 5
carbon atoms.
47. Can you describe a way a six-carbon sugar can be different from another sixcarbon sugar?
48. Sugar monomers assume circular shape in liquid medium for what reason?
49. What is a glycosidic bond?

50. What do we say this bond is formed by a condensation (dehydration synthesis)

reaction?
51. What is the function of starch? Is it found in plants, animals or bacteria?
52. What is the structural difference between starch and glycogen?
53. What are the three major groups of structural carbohydrates you learned in this
chapter?
54. Storage carbohydrates and structural carbohydrates are polymers of glucose.
What makes structural carbohydrates stronger than storage carbohydrates?
55. What are the general characteristics of lipids? If some compound is not dissolving
in water, can we label it as a lipid? Justify your answer.
56. What group of lipids does cholesterol belong to? Give one characteristic of this
group of lipids.
57. Glycerol head and three fatty acid tails are characteristic of ________________.
58. What is the difference between fats and oils? What is the reason for this
difference?
60. How do you define the difference between a fat and a phospholipid? How many
tails are present in phospholipids?
61. What do we mean by the term amphipathy? Which lipid has the highest
amphipathic properties?