3 major themes

Three major themes that I have identified in this course are: the storage mechanisms in metabolism/glycolysis, proteins and their functions, and thermodynamics.

I learned about glycolysis in biology, but it the knowledge about it never was very indepth. In biochemistry I have not only learned about glycolysis, but I have gained an enormous amount of insight into what it does, how it does it, the major control points in it, the major enzymes involved in it, and the major outputs by it. I also learned about the "reverse" process of it, gluconeogenesis. I had previously learned about proteins, in both biology, chemistry, and nutrition. I had learned how proteins were made up of amino acids, were a key nutrient, and that they body used them alot in certain processes. Now throughout this biochemistry course I see how proteins do what they do, and just how many processes in the body they control. I know understand how proteins work as enzymes and the mechanisms they use in the body, for example- having allosteric control. Thermodynamics is also a term I learned about in chemistry. I had known that were spontaneous reactions, and non spontaneous reactions but I didn't realize how much it had to with energy, and how that ties into our bodies metabolism. I know know that spontaneous reactions take place without outside intervention or energy, these are exergonic, and an example of that would be the aerobic metabolism of glucose. I also learned that non-spontaneous reactions are endergonic, and example is the phosphorylation of ADP, it's how metabolic processes provide energy. I was also able to tie in my knowledge of oxidation and reduction that I learned in chemistry to metabolism even further when I learned about thermodynamics in biochemistry. I learned that in metabolism both catabolism and anabolism take place. In catabolism, there is a breakdown, energy is released, and this is an oxidative process. I also learned that anabolism is the building up of things, it requires energy, so it is non-spontaneous, and is a  reductive process, it involves biosynthesis.