Talk:Polymer backbone

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CraigClark. Peer reviewers: Rtian96, Mlpatton.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Polymer backbone/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Rated "high" as the term is frequently used in high school biology, e.g. "phosphate-sugar backbone" of DNA, "NCC-backbone" of proteins or "carbon backbone" of fatty acids. - tameeria 03:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 03:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 08:49, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

My plan to edit this page

Hi!

I am planning on improving this page! I will be focusing on biochemistry and would appreciate if a chemist would be interested in helping me discuss polymer and organic chemistry applications.

Let me know if you have any suggestions! Thanks!

Sources for citation:

General source: Voet, Donald, Judith G. Voet, and Charlotte W. Pratt. Fundamentals of Biochemistry: Life at the Molecular Level. 5th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. Print

Sources for Polypeptides:

-Noller HF. 2017 The parable of the caveman and the Ferrari: protein synthesis and the RNA world. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 372: 20160187. https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0187

-Tamura, K. & Alexander, R.W. CMLS, Cell. Mol. Life Sci. (2004) 61: 1317. doi:10.1007/s00018-004-3449-9

-Guzzo, A. V. (1965). The influence of amino acid sequence on protein structure. Biophys. J. 5, 809–822. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5884309

Sources for Nucleic Acids:

-"Definition: Phosphate Backbone." Nature.com. Macmillan Publishers, 2014. Web. https://www.nature.com/scitable/definition/phosphate-backbone-273

-Harvard Department of Microbiology. "Nucleotides and the Double Helix." Life Sciences Cyberbridge. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2017. https://cyberbridge.mcb.harvard.edu/dna_1.html

-Lodish H, Berk A, Zipursky SL, et al. Molecular Cell Biology. 4th edition. New York: W. H. Freeman; 2000. Section 4.1, Structure of Nucleic Acids. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21514/

Sources for Polysaccharides: Bertozzi CR, Rabuka D. Structural Basis of Glycan Diversity. In: Varki A, Cummings RD, Esko JD, et al., editors. Essentials of Glycobiology. 2nd edition. Cold Spring Harbor (NY): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 2009. Chapter 2. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1955/

Rensselear Polytechnic Institute Department of Microbiology. "Glycogen Metabolism." N.p., n.d. Web. https://www.rpi.edu/dept/bcbp/molbiochem/MBWeb/mb1/part2/glycogen.htm

--CraigClark (talk) 23:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by CraigClark (talk • contribs) 03:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Detailed outline of my planned edit

Introductory Paragraph

-Introduction of the definition of “backbone” in chemistry (Polymer science) and biochemistry

-Brief discussion of use and importance in polymer science w/ one picture (from chemdraw) example

-Brief discussion of biological significance w/ one picture (from chemdraw or pymol) example

Character of the backbone

-Split into a chemistry and biochemistry section

-Leave the information currently discussing materials science, possibly add some more if time allows

-Make a concise brief description of character for biochemical molecules (each for nucleic acids, proteins, and polysaccharides)

-Discussion of structure relating to function in biological systems

-Add lots of links to other pages with more detail

Common Biological backbones - this will be the meat of my edit (3 sub sections)

Nucleic acid backbone:

-Description of biological importance (DNA and RNA + links)

-Detailed description of character

-How this structure relates to 3D structure and fxn

-Description of formation in biological systems

-History of discovery

-Some nice images

Protein backbone:

-Brief description of Biological importance of proteins

-Detailed description of character

-Brief description of fxnal relation to secondary, tertiary, quaternary structure (+ links)

-Description of formation in biological systems (+ links to transcription and translation)

-History of discovery

-Some nice images

Saccharides

-Description of biological importance and metabolism

-Detailed description of character and formation/breakdown in biological systems

-History of discovery

-Some nice images

These will all include as many links as possible to wikipedia pages with more detailed information.

Common Backbones in Polymer Chemistry/ Materials science:

This section may be beyond my scope of time and knowledge. I may be able to add a little bit of information and possibly some more links to other wikipedia pages. I could also use Chemdraw to draw a couple of images and make it look nicer/ make more sense to viewers with a limited knowledge of the subject

--CraigClark (talk) 01:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Drawing

Several images have been added - I have removed the "Chemical Diagram needed" request. Egmason (talk) 07:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Questions

In the overview of common backbones, why are polymer chemistry and biology separate sections? To me, it seems like that implies that polymer chemistry is separate from biology, when in reality, polymer chemistry is an aspect of biology itself? --Ala127 (talk) 04:42, 5 April 2019 (UTC)