1 / 13

Understanding Carbohydrates: The Sweet and Starchy Connection

Learn about carbohydrates, sugars, and their structures along with the differences between starch and cellulose. Discover the importance of carbohydrates in energy storage and as structural compounds in plants and animals.

jsharkey
Download Presentation

Understanding Carbohydrates: The Sweet and Starchy Connection

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Welcome to: Mmmmm -- so sweet and yet so starchy…

  2. Carbohydrates are: Sugars • Sugars end with suffix “-ose” • Produced by photosynthesis • Contain the elements: C,H,O or C(H2O)

  3. Monosaccharides: “1” • Simple sugars • Ex. Glucose C6H12O6* very, very important! • It is from this molecule that animals get their energy • Ex. Fructose C6H12O6

  4. All C6H12O6 Notice that glucose and fructose have identical formulas but their structures are different.

  5. Disaccharides “2” • glucose – glucose = maltose • glucose – fructose = sucrose • glucose – galactose = lactose

  6. Polysaccharides “many” • Complex carbohydratesLong chains of monosaccharides

  7. Storage Carbohydrates • Starch: complex, stores energy in plants“pearl necklace, each pearl = glucose”broken down into monosaccharides glu-glu-glu-glu-glu-glu-glu-glu

  8. Storage Carbohydrates • Glycogen – a branched chain of as many as 2000 glucose units. Storage form of glucose in animals.

  9. Structural Carbohydrates • Cellulose: • Structural compound in plant cell walls • found in wood and paper • uses a modified form of glucose • still a “string of pearls” • cannot be broken down by the body

  10. Structural Carbohydrates • Chitin: • Structural carbohydrate in insect exoskeleton and fungal cell walls • uses a highly modified form of glucose • still a “string of pearls”

  11. Starch vs cellulose….identical in composition but not quite in structure. The bond joining the glucose units together is different….our bodies can break the bond in starch/amylose to get at the individual glucose units but not in cellulose. Source:http://www.rpi.edu/dept/bcbp/molbiochem/MBWeb/mb1/part2/sugar.htm

  12. We tend to use the words “sugar” and “starch” and “carbohydrate” loosely. When we say a food is “high in carbohydrates” do we mean the food is high in “sugar” or “starch” or both? Potatoes and bread “starchy” foods and are “high in carbohydrates” due to the starch they contain. Fruits are “high in carbohydrates” but we would never say they were “starchy” - they contain almost all simple carbohydrates such as sucrose, fructose. We tend to say “high in carbohydrates” for foods with a high level of the complex carbohydrates known as starch. And for foods that have high levels of the simplex carbohydrates, we tend to say they are “high in sugar”. But sugar and starch are really the same thing! They’re both made from glucose.

  13. Isomers

More Related