Conclusion

In this chapter, we spent a lot of time looking at biologically active molecules—but did you notice
that these molecules are simply applications of the general principles that we have been learning
throughout the chapters of this book? By applying your knowledge of the reactions and properties
of different types of molecules, you can understand how biological processes work and how
complex organic chemistry mechanisms work, like those of the Strecker and Gabriel syntheses.
Many of these processes will fall into categories of reactions that we’ve seen before over and over—
nucleophilic substitution, nucleophilic addition, and condensation reactions are just a few
examples. The MCAT doesn’t require you to memorize tables of reactants or regurgitate hundreds of
named reactions from scratch. Instead, the MCAT asks you to look at the bigger picture and
understand the trends—which you’ve now learned!