Carbon in Organisms

• All of life is made of the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrogen.
• Though water makes up 70-95% of a cell, the rest is mostly carbon.
• Carbon is the most versatile element as a building block
• used in carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids

Electron Configuration

• has 4 valence electrons
  • can make up to 4 covalent bonds at a time
  • can make single, double, and triple bonds

Carbon Skeleton

• forms large molecules that are chains, rings, or branched

• vary in length and double bond location

  • location of double bonds greatly affects a molecules structure and properties

• varying structure allows for diversity

• Isomers: molecules with same chemical formulas but different atom orientation

  

  • Structural: have different sequence of the atoms compared to each other

  

  • Stereoisomers: connected in same way but are oriented in space differently

    

    • Enantiomers (optical isomers): type of stereoisomers that are unchangeable mirror images of each other
    • Disastereomers: type of stereoisomers that are not eneantiomers

      • Cis-trans Isomers/ Geometric Isomers: molecules have functional groups attached round a rigid carbon-carbon bond, so functional groups are oriented in only a few different ways

        • cis: identical groups on the same side
        • trans: identical groups on different sides (directly across from each other)

        

• SHAPE/STRUCTURE ALWAYS DETERMINES FUNCTION

Hydrocarbon

• hydrogen and carbon combination
• stable, nonpolar molecules
• gas at room temp
• major component of lipids

Functional Groups

• components of organic molecules attached to carbon skeleton that play a role in chemical reaction