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 so 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 so glycosidic bonds are once again the covalent bonds that link monosaccharides together. And then last but not least, recall that the hydrolysis reaction is what's going to be needed to break down. So hydrolysis is used to break down polysaccharides into individual monosaccharides.
So 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 2 separate monosaccharides, one over here and one over here, and these are 2 separate glucose monosaccharides. And so if we wanted to join these 2 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. And, also what forms is a covalent bond linking the 2 separate monosaccharides. And so when these 2 are linked together, the covalent bond that links them is referred to as a glycosidic bond just like what we indicated up above. And so, notice that as soon as these 2 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.
And so if we wanted to break down this maltose disaccharide into its individual monosaccharides then of course we're gonna need the hydrolysis reaction. And recall lysis is that root that means breakdown or cleave and so that's going to break down or cleave the glycosidic bond here to release the 2 separate monosaccharides. And so 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. So this here concludes our introduction to the formation and breakdown of polysaccharides, and I'll see you all in our next video.