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CH 106 - Lesson 6
Water and Lipids
In this and the next lessons we will look at the chemistry of living things.
You are probably aware that even the simplest organisms are incredibly complex. A simple,
single-celled bacterium, for example, contains over 5,000 different kinds of organic
compounds. Yet if you look at all those compounds in a systematic way, you will find that
you can classify most of them into relatively few types. The types that
we will be focusing on in this course are the lipids, the carbohydrates,
the proteins, and the nucleic acids.
Some of these compounds are polymers, made up of smaller monomer units
bonded to one another chemically. Some are soluble in water, some are not.
Some provide structure, some provide function and some provide
energy.
In this lesson we will look at the nature of water and of lipids
and their role in biochemistry and then focus on the metabolism of fats.
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