In this video, we're going to talk about the formation and the breakdown of polysaccharides. And so recall from our previous lesson videos that dehydration synthesis reactions would be needed to link individual monosaccharides together in order to build polysaccharides. And once again, the synthesis part of dehydration lets us know that we're going to be building or synthesizing the polysaccharides. Now the covalent bonds that link individual monosaccharides together are going to be referred to as glycosidic bonds.
And then last but not least, recall that the hydrolysis reaction is what's going to be needed to break down. Hydrolysis is used to break down polysaccharides into individual monosaccharides. When we take a look at our image down below, we can see the formation of a sugar called maltose from 2 glucose molecules. Notice on the far left over here, we have these two separate monosaccharides, one over here and one over here, and these are two separate glucose monosaccharides. If we wanted to join these two separate glucose monosaccharides together, like what we have over here, then we're going to need, of course, a dehydration synthesis reaction, which we know dehydrates the molecule, releasing a water molecule.
Also, what forms is a covalent bond linking the two separate monosaccharides. When these two are linked together, the covalent bond that links them is referred to as a glycosidic bond just like what we indicated up above. Notice that as soon as these two glucose monosaccharides are joined together, it becomes a new sugar that we call maltose, and so this is a maltose disaccharide starting to build our polysaccharide here. If we wanted to break down this maltose disaccharide into its individual monosaccharides, then of course we're gonna need the hydrolysis reaction. Recall lysis is that root means breakdown or cleave and so that's going to break down or cleave the glycosidic bond here to release the two separate monosaccharides.
A lot of review here, but one of the main takeaways is once again that the bond between individual monosaccharides is referred to as a glycosidic bond. This here concludes our introduction to the formation and breakdown of polysaccharides, and I'll see you all in our next video.