Introduction to Biochemistry — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Hey, it's professor Dave, let's talk about biochemistry.
2. 0:10What is biochemistry? Is it biology? Is it chemistry?
3. 0:14Well as you might guess, it's sort of in-between, quite literally in terms of
4. 0:18size. In the great panoply of the sciences, biochemistry sits right here.
5. 0:23If we go smaller we get into small molecules made of just a few atoms which
6. 0:28is chemistry, and even smaller than that we get to the particles that are even
7. 0:32smaller than a single atom, and that's particle physics. If instead we go much bigger
8. 0:38we are looking no longer at individual molecules, but entire cells or parts of a
9. 0:43cell. That's biology. Right in between is biochemistry.
10. 0:48This is the domain of large biomolecules like proteins and DNA, and the things
11. 0:52they can do. Is it important to understand? You better believe it.
12. 0:56Anything that has to do with nutrition, medicine, or general health is rooted in biochemistry.
13. 1:02That's because nutrition has to do with metabolism, the chemical process by which
14. 1:06molecules in your body break down the food you eat. Your health is governed by
15. 1:11biochemistry as well, since all diseases have a molecular basis. When you really
16. 1:16get down to it, you are just a bunch of molecules, so we need to know what they all do.
17. 1:21That's why the domain of biochemistry is so often misunderstood. Everywhere you
18. 1:26look there is misinformation. Diet fads, medical hoaxes, and pseudoscience from
19. 1:31every direction. Many people, when looking at their own health even try to step
20. 1:36away from science completely, opting instead for unsubstantiated alternatives.
21. 1:41But this is a poor strategy, because the status of everything in your body is
22. 1:46governed by large biomolecules like enzymes, receptors, and DNA. These are
23. 1:52molecules that biochemists understand very well, and we all need to learn about
24. 1:56them if we want to have any kind of clear picture about what goes on inside the body.
25. 2:01Unfortunately you can't understand biochemistry without understanding the
26. 2:05basic chemistry that it breaks down to. What these large biomolecules do is
27. 2:10fundamentally the same stuff we learned in general
28. 2:13and organic chemistry, it's just a bunch of plus and minus charges that make
29. 2:17chemical reactions happen. So if you are watching this series to supplement your
30. 2:23undergraduate biochemistry course and you remember your basic chemistry,
31. 2:27you're all set to move forward. If you are someone that just wants to learn
32. 2:31more about how the human body works but you haven't learned much chemistry, here
33. 2:36is a list of other tutorials from my general chemistry playlist and organic
34. 2:42chemistry playlist that you really will want to watch first in order for any of
35. 2:46this to make sense.
36. 2:48I promise this is the bare minimum, and I also promise that if you understand
37. 2:52these, everything in this series will be pretty easy to understand. When we see a
38. 2:58picture of, say, an enzyme, and it looks like a weird tangled blob, we draw it
39. 3:02that way to save time, because there are hundreds or even thousands of atoms in
40. 3:07it, which would be impractical to draw out individually using the line notation
41. 3:11we are familiar with. But we absolutely must be able to understand this enzyme
42. 3:16on the molecular level, so we can know what functional groups it's made of and
43. 3:21how it does basic chemistry. Otherwise biochemistry seems like magic, but it's
44. 3:27not, it's just many surprisingly simple chemical reactions, even if they are
45. 3:31applied in complex ways and on huge molecules. My goal with this series is to
46. 3:37focus on the basic concepts of biochemistry and illuminate them for the
47. 3:40student and the common viewer alike. I may occasionally mention details that
48. 3:45aren't that important to non-students, and I also may gloss over some of the
49. 3:49more technical details.
50. 3:51This is in hopes of keeping everyone engaged. But for anyone who might be
51. 3:55viewing these tutorials, if you focus on gaining the big picture of all these
52. 3:59biochemical processes working together to create the complexity of life, you
53. 4:05will emerge much wiser at the end of the playlist.
54. 4:08Whatever you do, don't get discouraged watch more than once if you need to, and
55. 4:12as always feel free to email me with any questions you might have:
56. 4:19Now let's learn some biochemistry!