A disaccharide, also called double sugar, is the sugar formed when two monosaccharides (simple sugars) are joined by a glycosidic linkage. Like monosaccharides, disaccharides are soluble in water. Three common examples are sucrose, lactose, and maltose. Disaccharides are one of the four chemical groupings of carbohydrates (monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides). The most common …

The word protein refers to a type of molecule in food that can be broken down into amino acids. They are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. Protein accounts on average about 1/4th to 1/3rd of …

Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that takes place inside a plant, producing sugar type food for the plant to survive. Carbon dioxide, water and light are all needed for photosynthesis to take place. It happens in the leaves of a plant and the other green portions as well. Photosynthesis is a …

Did you know that the average American family spends almost $2,000 a year on energy bills? That’s a lot of money! In this blog post, we will discuss some simple ways that you can save money and the environment by making changes to your home. We will cover everything from …

Transposons were first discovered in corn (maize) during the 1940s and ’50s by American scientist Barbara McClintock, whose work won her the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983. The colourful pattern on maize ears have an important scientific significance. Modern research have shown that the stripes and spots …

DNA replication in eukaryotes is a complex and unique process involving many enzymes and thousands of ORI at a single time. Unlike the prokaryotic DNA, it involves a linear mode of replication. Why does linear DNA replication involve  multiple origins at a time? The large linear chromosomes in eukaryotic cell …

Following Meselson and Stahl’s work, investigators confirmed that other organisms also use semiconservative replication. There are, however, several different ways that semiconservative replication can take place, differing principally in the nature of the template DNA—whether it is linear or circular—and in the number of replication forks. Replicon and Origin of …

Translation takes place on ribosomes; indeed, ribosomes can be thought of as moving protein-synthesizing machines. A ribosome attaches near the 5′ end of an mRNA strand and moves toward the 3′ end, translating the codons as it goes. Synthesis begins at the amino end of the protein, and the protein …

The process of transcription is very similar in prokaryotes and eukaryotes, but there are major differences in the relation between the transcript and the mRNA used for polypeptide synthesis in eukaryotes. In prokaryotes, the immediate product of transcription (the primary transcript) is mRNA; by contrast, the primary transcript (also called …

The four bases in DNA – A, T, G, and C are sufficient to specify the 20 amino acids in proteins because each codon is three bases in length. Each sequence of three adjacent bases in mRNA is a codon that specifies a particular amino acid (or chain termination). The …