Natural Product Biomolecules - Organic Chemistry Concepts: An EFL Approach - page 151

CHAPTER 8
Natural Product
Biomolecules

8.1 WHAT ARE BIOMOLECULES?
Natural products refer to the many different compounds which are made by
living organisms in the world around us. The history of organic chemistry is linked
to these naturally occurring molecules. The purpose of this chapter is to look at
some of the important types of these natural products. With the concepts from
earlier chapters, we show the link between organic chemistry and biochemistry—the
composition, structure, and reactions of the biomolecules in living systems.

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Biomolecules have the same functional groups that we studied in earlier chap-
ters. However, biomolecules can have more complex structures with many func-
tional groups in the same molecule. The individual functional group properties,
structure, and basic principles which apply to simple organic molecules are still
mostly the same in these natural systems.

This chapter covers four classes of natural products: carbohydrates (sugars), lip-
ids, peptides/proteins (from amino acids), and nucleic acids. No biochemical
details are shown, and we discuss only the properties and principles which were
covered in the earlier material. Systematic naming is used only if it is needed to
recognize molecular classes.

8.2 CARBOHYDRATES
Carbohydrates are polyhydroxy aldehydes and ketones, or their more complex
precursors such as starch or cellulose. They are found in all living organisms.
Some simple examples are shown in Figure 8.1 . See Program 25.

FIGURE 8.1
Diagrams of some simple sugars ( Fischer projections ).