Been studying monomers and been pretty confused on what they do and how they could even make a macromolecule.
In: Chemistry
They’re like Lego blocks. Each individual Lego piece is a monomer of a Lego creation, and individually they do nothing. But arrange a bunch of Lego blocks in the right way and you have…just about anything.
Macromolecule monomers are the same. Nucleotides, the monomers of nucleic acids, have a “top” and “bottom” side much the same way that Lego blocks do. These sides can react with each other the way you press two Lego blocks together, to form a larger molecule made up of two nucleotides. Repeat billions of times and you build a genome, which can be read by proteins (also made up of monomers) to make proteins to make you.
I’ll use glucose as an example, it’s a monomer in cellulose (fibre) and starch.
Glucose has 6 carbons, with hydrogens and oxygens attached to them. Think of it as a ring with bits sticking out. Those bits allow the rings to connect.
In cellulose the first carbon connects to the sixth carbon of the next one with an oxygen. So you get a long chain of glucose-glucose-glucose, like railway cars connected together. In starch, the first carbon connects to the fourth carbon, making a different kind of chain.
The other macromolecules use the same principle. For proteins there are a bunch of different amino acids, for DNA and RNA there are nucleotides.
In some cases the “railway cars” can connect with other trains on their sides, so instead of one long train you can get a network of trains.
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