FoundationalConceptsNeuroscience

into hydrocarbons. Crude oil—petroleum (Latin petra = rock, oleum = oil)—is composed of a mixture of all these molecules and man ...

H2C mY CHsz 35 CH 3 CCH H3c~ 3 ~C~ H ‘ * CH 3 Branched octane The chain of carbons may even fold back upon itself to form a clos ...

It is now appreciated that, rather than an alteration of single and double bonds, all the carbon-carbon bonds in benzene are equ ...

While not the most abundant neurotransmitters in the human brain, these two molecules are perhaps the best known of the neurotra ...

HO NH> NH> HO HO \ Dopamine N H Serotonin Here we are simply not drawing the Cs and most of the Hs. We are drawing only th ...

HO Ly ~ NH - OH tes, (yy NHa HO Dopamine HO Amphetamine Norepinephrine HN ~~ oo^6 NH» HN COOH Methamphetamine Phenylalanii enyla ...

Oo CH; see:^4 of N CH; Caffeine One sees that it, too, is simply a combination of rings of carbon and nitrogen atoms, together w ...

Water’s polarity causes the molecules to loosely stick to one an- other, a phenomenon called hydrogen bonding—the slightly negat ...

to the rigid matrix of hydrogen bonds taking slightly more space than when the molecules of water can slip and slide past one an ...

to hang out with) other things that have polarity or charge. We call things that like to hang out with water hydrophilic (Greek ...

of thousands of atoms held together by covalent bonds. Below four fundamental types of biological molecules are described: lipid ...

from the end of the hydrocarbon chain, a so-called omega-9 fatty acid. O FP OH Oleic acid Because lipids are composed primarily ...

Phosphatidyicholine The two hydrocarbon lipid tails, here both eighteen carbons long, may be of varying lengths. The head group ...

Figure 3.2. Diagram of phospholipid bilayer: the head groups, represented as small circles, are to the outside of the bilayer, a ...

brane. In many ways, these membranes are more like fluids in their properties than they are like solids. This brings us to the n ...

Figure 3.3. Phospholipid bilayer forming a biological membrane. Membrane proteins are here depicted as amorphous, potato-like st ...

between them. This joining does not happen spontaneously but only under specific catalytic conditions found within the ribosomes ...

of amino acids is called a polypeptide; if it is more than about forty amino acids long, then it is called a protein. The thresh ...

Figure 3.4. Myoglobin molecule. In describing proteins, several descriptive levels of structure have been defined. What is calle ...

molecule, created by all the electrical and geometric properties of the constituent amino acids guiding the folding of the chain ...