Can somebody explain these two things simply and tell me how they relate to monomers and polymers? Thanks!
In: Biology
So lots of molecules in your body, such as sugars, have bits that end in OH–an oxygen atom bonded to a hydrogen atom. (Proteins also have bits that end in NH2–a nitrogen and 2 hydrogens. These behave similarly for this example)
When your body wants to join two of these smaller molecules (monomers) into a bigger chain (polymer), often the best way to do that is by joining up those two OH groups into something that looks a bit like [monomer-O-monomer]. (Why it happens this way is due to complicated organic chemistry and biochem, and is beyond the scope of an ELI5.)
You may have noticed that in joining the two monomers, we lost an O and both Hs. These are the exact components of water: H2O. In fact, an actual water molecule is usually a result of this reaction. So we removed water to make a polymer–thus why it’s called dehydration synthesis (or sometimes condensation synthesis).
Hydrolysis is the exact opposite: using H2O to split the polymer into two (or more, depending on the size of the polymer chain) monomers by restoring those two OH groups. Hydrolysis literally means “water splitting”.
Edit to add a [picture](https://useruploads.socratic.org/5ZPZv8qzSYKS2dGqJcdB_885917f865b20c569acbf9e6a11664837a194549.png). The structures here are a bit complicated, but you can see the 2 OHs getting joined together and the H2O that results.
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