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Ch. 5 - The Structure and Function of Large Biological Molecules

Chapter 5, Problem 2

The enzyme amylase can break glycosidic linkages between glucose monomers only if the monomers are in the α form. Which of the following could amylase break down? a. glycogen, starch, and amylopectin b. glycogen and cellulose c. cellulose and chitin d. starch, chitin, and cellulose

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Video transcript

Hello everyone. And in today's video will be identifying which one of the following carbohydrates does not contain an alpha. Like acidic linkage. Now, if you recall what I'd like, acidic linkage is there's nothing more than a bond that forms between two or more carbohydrate units in order to join them together and form a larger unit or what we call a policy or the cycle. Right now, these alpha like acidic linkage is nothing more than one of the types that are possible. There's alpha and there's bedrock like acidic linkages. And this really depends on the carbohydrate unit that we're dealing with, understanding which type of linkage forms, depends on their structure and their stereo chemistry of the carbohydrate units. And so this is a very tedious method understanding these two characteristics of the carbohydrates. And since we're dealing with so many types of carbohydrates, we're not going to be using it to solve this problem. Instead, we're going to be directly memorizing the type of black acidic linkage that forms between the carbohydrates or the Sakha rights. And this method is more useful because they're mostly the same except by a few exceptions. So we're going to go over them Now, for example, multiples forms on alpha one for like a static linkage. Remember we're looking for the bedrock, like pathetic linkage. So we can eliminate mortals from our answer choices. Following. We have pectin which also forms and alpha electrostatic linkage. So we can also eliminate pectin from our answer choices when we know we have Starch storage forms on alpha 14 or four and six. Like acidic linkage. So we can also eliminate storage from our answer choices. And finally we have glycogen you like the gym forms as we can see and all four on four and then alpha 16 like acidic linkage as well. So none of these carbohydrates so far are able to form bedrock like acidic linkages. So we're left with cellulose and some of those forms of beta 14 like ascetic linkage between its individual units. And so cellulose is the only carbohydrate from the options given that is able to form a beta like acidic linkage. The only one that does not contain an alpha called record linkage. All the other carbohydrates presented form act like I said a linkage one way or another so they do not figure description and they're not our final answer. So answer choice A is the correct answer. Thank you very much for sticking around until the end of this video and I really hope it helped you