bio mols

• Disaccharides are made up of two monosaccharides joined together by a glycosidic bond like sucrose.
• Water is important to organisms due to its high specific heat capacity, polar solvent, surface tension, incompressibility, maximum density at 4 °C, and its role as a solvent.
• Carbohydrates are classified as monosaccharides, disaccharides and polysaccharides.
• The structure of the hexose glucose (alpha and beta) and the pentose ribose is important to understanding carbohydrates.
• Monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, galactose) join to form disaccharides (sucrose, lactose and maltose) and polysaccharides (starch formed from amylose and amylopectin; glycogen) through condensation reactions forming glycosidic bonds, and these can be split through hydrolysis reactions.
• The structure of glucose, starch, glycogen and cellulose relates to their function.
• A triglyceride is synthesised including the formation of ester bonds during condensation reactions between glycerol and three fatty acids.
• In the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, it took six months before the World Health Organisation (WHO) coordinated an international response.
• About two-thirds of the Ebola cases in Guinea were caused by the local practice of washing dead bodies, which are still infectious.
• No one was allowed to enter or leave the quarantine area to stop further spread of the infection.
• Impose travel restrictions to and from the region to prevent the infection from spreading to other countries.
• Reduce spread by enforcing simple cultural and hygiene practices, such as hand-washing by healthcare workers and others in contact with patients and victims.
• The practice of washing dead bodies has now been stopped in Guinea.
• On 8 August 2014, a cordon sanitaire (or quarantine area) was established around a triangular area between Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where 70% of the known cases had been found.
• Many countries, including the USA, still impose restrictions on those travelling to and from the Ebola region.
• The quarantine area has since been reduced to a series of checkpoints for hand-washing and measuring body temperature on major roads throughout the region.
• The differences between saturated and unsaturated lipids are important to understanding lipids.
• Unsaturated Fatty Acids are fatty acids with one or more C=C double bonds, and are found in cold-blooded animals and plants.
• The structure of lipids relates to their role in energy storage, waterproofing and insulation.
• Insect exoskeletons contain waxy lipids to stop water loss, and plants have a lipid waxy cuticle to reduce water loss.
• Phospholipids have a polar hydrophilic "head" (the negatively-charged phosphate group) and two non-polar hydrophobic "tails" (the fatty acid chains).
• Each amino acid has different properties, which means that proteins can have a wide range of properties.
• Saturated Fatty Acids are fatty acids with no C=C double bonds, and are found in warm-blooded animals.
• Unsaturated Fats are fats with one or more C=C double bonds, and are liquid at room temperature.
• Proteins are the most complex and most diverse group of biological compounds, with an astonishing range of different functions.
• Amino acids are made of the five elements C H O N S, and contain both an amino group and an acid group.
• There are 20 different R groups, and so 20 different amino acids.
• Phospholipids are lipids with a phosphate group in place of one fatty acid chain, and may also have other groups attached to the phosphate.
• Saturated and Unsaturated Fats are fats with no C=C double bonds, and are solid at room temperature.
• The structure and properties of phospholipids relate to their function in cell membranes.
• The structure of an amino acid is important to understanding proteins.
• The formation of polypeptides and proteins (as amino acid monomers linked by peptide bonds in condensation reactions) is crucial to understanding proteins.
• Ionic, hydrogen and disulphide bonding in the structure of proteins is significant.
• Uncharged or non-polar molecules such as lipids do not dissolve so well in water and are called hydrophobic ("water hating").
• Water has a high specific heat capacity, which means that it takes a lot of energy to heat, so water does not change temperature very easily.
• The expansion of water as it freezes causes freeze-thaw erosion of rocks, which results in the formation of soil, without which there could be no terrestrial plant life.
• At least 80% of the total mass of living organisms is water.
• Charged or polar molecules such as salts, sugars, amino acids dissolve readily in water and are called hydrophilic ("water loving").
• Water requires a lot of energy to change state from a liquid into a gas, since so many hydrogen bonds have to be broken, so as water evaporates it extracts heat from around it, and this is used to cool animals (sweating and panting) and plants (transpiration).
• Water is cohesive and adhesive, explaining why long columns of water can be sucked up tall trees by transpiration without breaking and why water sticks to other surfaces, such as xylem vessels.