phospholipids & fats?

Question

I need help explaining the difference.

Also- Would animal starches be considered as a polysaccharide?


(no, you're not giving me the answers to any homework, I'm writing a paper on carbs.)

Answer 1

phospholipids are the membrane around cells, organelles and nucleus. It's kind of the "fluid walls" that everything is made up of.

They include a phosphate, a lipid and are held together by hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties.

Answer 2

The term 'fats' is sort of broad.
Fatty acids are a carbon chain with COO- at one end. These fatty acids can be combined with different things for transport and storage and use as energy.
A tri-acyl-glyceride is 3 fatty acid chains connected to a glyceride for storage. If you take off a fatty acid chain you get a di-acyl-glyceride to which a phosphate group can be added to get a phosphoplipid (2 fatty acid chains and a phosphate). Phospholipids are the main component of lipid membranes.
A fatty acid chain could also be added to cholesterol, making a cholesterol ester.

Starches are made of sugars (or saccharides), not fatty acid chains; you can imagine them as rings. A polysaccharide is a 'chain' of connected rings. Starch is made by plants to store sugars. It is a chain of glucose sugars, so yes, it is a polysaccharide. A polysaccharide can also be called a complex carbohydrate.

Answer 3

your question is kinda vague by phospholipids have a fatty chain, could be a di or triacylglycerol chain, with a phosphate head group..fats are the hydrocarbons of the fatty chain, its the CH3(CH2)n part
and yes starch is a polysaccharide because its just a whole bunch of glucose molecules attached to eachother

Answer 4

Glycogen (commonly known as animal starch) is a polysaccharide.




Fatty Acids

Fatty acids fill two major roles in the body:
1. as the components of more complex membrane lipids.
2. as the major components of stored fat in the form of triacylglycerols.

Fatty acids are long-chain hydrocarbon molecules containing a carboxylic acid moiety at one end. The numbering of carbons in fatty acids begins with the carbon of the carboxylate group. At physiological pH, the carboxyl group is readily ionized, rendering a negative charge onto fatty acids in bodily fluids.
Fatty acids that contain no carbon-carbon double bonds are termed saturated fatty acids; those that contain double bonds are unsaturated fatty acids. The numeric designations used for fatty acids come from the number of carbon atoms, followed by the number of sites of unsaturation (eg, palmitic acid is a 16-carbon fatty acid with no unsaturation and is designated by 16:0). The site of unsaturation in a fatty acid is indicated by the symbol D and the number of the first carbon of the double bond (e.g. palmitoleic acid is a 16-carbon fatty acid with one site of unsaturation between carbons 9 and 10, and is designated by 16:1D9).
Saturated fatty acids of less than eight carbon atoms are liquid at physiological temperature, whereas those containing more than ten are solid. The presence of double bonds in fatty acids significantly lowers the melting point relative to a saturated fatty acid.
The majority of body fatty acids are acquired in the diet. However, the lipid biosynthetic capacity of the body (fatty acid synthase and other fatty acid modifying enzymes) can supply the body with all the various fatty acid structures needed. Two key exceptions to this are the highly unsaturated fatty acids know as linoleic acid and linolenic acid, containing unsaturation sites beyond carbons 9 and 10. These two fatty acids cannot be synthesized from precursors in the body, and are thus considered the essential fatty acids; essential in the sense that they must be provided in the diet. Since plants are capable of synthesizing linoleic and linolenic acid humans can aquire these fats by consuming a variety of plants or else by eating the meat of animals that have consumed these plant fats.



Basic Structure of Phospholipids

The basic structure of phospolipids is very similar to that of the triacylglycerides except that C-3 (sn3)of the glycerol backbone is esterified to phosphoric acid. The building block of the phospholipids is phosphatidic acid which results when the X substitution in the basic structure shown in the Figure below is a hydrogen atom. Substitutions include ethanolamine (phosphatidylethanolamine), choline (phosphatidylcholine, also called lecithins), serine (phosphatidylserine), glycerol (phosphatidylglycerol), myo-inositol (phosphatidylinositol, these compounds can have a variety in the numbers of inositol alcohols that are phosphorylated generating polyphosphatidylinositols), and phosphatidylglycerol (diphosphatidylglycerol more commonly known as cardiolipins).

Answer 5

yes animals form polysaccharides in to glycogen

and plants form them in to starch