How many water molecules would be required to completely hydrolyse a carbohydrate polymer that contained 100 monomers?
Now that takes some time to think!
2007-01-19 20:50:37 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
It takes one water molecule to hydrolyse every two monomers.
I believe the answer would be 99 water molecules . (The end molucules would have only one active site with the enzyme)
2007-01-20 10:30:36 · answer #1 · answered by ursaitaliano70 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, without specific information on what kind of molecules make up your polymer, we have to ballpark it. If there are 10 monomers in the polymer, that means that it is comprised of ten separate, small molecules that are linked together. Therefore, if water is going to be used in breaking those bonds apart, you'd need 9 molecules of water because there are 9 bonds connecting 10 monomers. Look at it like this; we'll assign letters for each monomer. A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J Count each line, - , as a bond and you'll see that there are nine of them connecting all of the individual letters, so even though we have 10 letters (monomers) we only have 9 bonds between them. Without more data, the only answer I can give you is that you need 9 water molecules to hydrolyze and break down bonds between monomers in a 10-unit polymer.
2016-05-24 00:06:33 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
well it depends on what carbohydrate it is buddy
2007-01-19 23:57:19 · answer #3 · answered by Arnaq 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋