Connecting knowledge with past knowledge.

Since I have been a biology major at UNH, I how come to see how important proteins in Biology. Biochemistry in particular has made me realize just how crucial proteins are, and the functions that they have in organisms. In the past I knew that amino acids were the building blocks of most things in life, but I didn't know the extent of the levels of protein structure. Now I know about there primary structure, and which is the certain amino acid structure; and that there are secondary structures. There are also tertiary structures, which are the overall structure of the protein which can be seen through X Ray crystallography, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. More specifically I know the structure of each basic amino acid: they have an amino group, carboxy group, side chain group, and alpha carbon. I can also tell if there are R group is polar or nonpolar, acidic or basic. I also know about the bonds that form it, for example the peptide bonds, and how they limit the possible orientations of the peptide backbone in protein. I also know about the L-form amino acids. In the past during Chemistry class, I learned what compromised a hydrogen bond, but I didn't realize how important they can be to certain biochemical structures, for example in the a-helix, the hydrogen bonds are parallel to the helix axis, and stabilize the protein ribbon structure.
In the past I learned the pH scale, the values it had from 1-10 and that more acidic things had lower pH, and more basic things had higher pH. Now I know about how amino acids ca be titrated. I can also determine the pKa values from the amino acid structure and curves. I also realize how we can choose buffers from amino acids, by looking to see if they have a suitable pKa, and the rule of thumb that the pKa should be plus or minus 1 pH unit fro the pH of the reaction. I have also been able to connect that buffer system to things I learned in Anatomy and Physiology about blood, like how the blood buffer system works. Thus far, I have enjoyed learning how Biochemistry impacts the systems and processes that I've been learning about all of these years in biology, chemistry, anatomy, immunology and serology, body fluids, and so on. The study of biochemistry allows me to further extrapolate how the subjects relate and overlap.  I look forward to gaining even more knowledge about how biochemistry influences, and relates to all the past knowledge I have acquired through my studies.