Questions tagged [biochemistry]
The study of chemistry within the scope of biology: the compounds that occur and the reactions involving them in living organisms.
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How many fruit flies from a single banana, and what is the bottleneck?
Suppose I start breeding a fruit fly population on a single rotting overripe banana which weights 100g, in an isolated container. The fruit flies don't have access to anything else, though ventilation ...
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Export AlphaFold Server file and visualize on PyMol
I am currently working with AlphaFold Server, which is Google DeepMind's public access release of AlphaFold3, a model for biomolecule structure prediction.
I am using it in order to predict protein-...
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Post-Translational Modification in insulin production
When searching "How is insulin produced commercially" on Google, most results simply say something along the lines of "The insulin gene is inserted into a bacteria, which then express ...
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Why does acidosis cause cells to remove hydrogen ions using the proton/potassium ion pump rather than exchange with another cation?
Many mammalian cells respond to acidosis by transferring hydrogen ions to the blood using a proton/potassium ion pump. Why is this system employed rather than one involving another cation such as ...
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Can onion consumption cause Heinz bodies in humans?
It was well attested that eating onions can cause the presence of Heinz bodies in the blood of cats, dogs, and other animals, due to the toxic effect of, apparently, thiosulfate, which denatures ...
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About tomatoes pigments, why red tomatoes rather than yellow ones
How the first tomatoes (yellow) that arrived in Europe turned from yellow to red ?
I know the yellow pigment is xantophylle and the red one is lycopene, but my question is, was it an adaptation of the ...
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Why are heavy metals toxic? Lead and Carbon are in the same group. One is toxic, the other is not
I have read the different answers on the toxicity of heavy metals but I am still confused about the topic. Why does the mass of the nuclei matter when chemical reactions only involve the electrons. ...
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Why can't a third acetyl-CoA condense with acetoacetyl-CoA in the same way, as two acetyl-CoAs condense in the thiolase reaction?
In the biochemical ketogenesis pathway, acetoacetyl-CoA reacts with acetyl-CoA to form HMG-CoA (3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA), in a reaction catalysed by HMG-CoA synthase.
But why can't acetoacetyl-...
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Understanding association kinetics
I would like to understand the classic kinetic model of association / dissociation that tries to describe the concentration of a compound $[\ce{AB}]$.
Let's say we have a model:
$\ce{A + B} \...
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Human metabolic pathways involving particular proteins
I am currently working on a project that involves analyzing the pathways in which certain proteins are involved. I have compiled a list of proteins, and I am keen to explore the pathways they ...
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Are there any completely, or 'true', Mendelian traits that do not display any polygeny at all?
Recently, I learned about polygenic traits and it got me wondering, are there any truly Mendelian traits where the trait displayed exists in a total binary?
I have looked at some questions on the ...
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How does the recently discovered nitroplast fix nitrogen?
Nitroplast is a newly discovered eukaryotic organelle that can perform nitrogen fixation. Like chloroplast, nitroplast was derived from a cyanobacteria species (UCYN-A). Cyanobacteria are the only ...
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Atp as energy currency [duplicate]
I have seen that ATP and sometimes GTP is used to deliver energy to reactions in the cell. What is the reason that no other chemical is used for the purpose ? What is the charistiristics of the ...
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How to prevent small-protein smearing in SDS-PAGE?
I am doing SDS-PAGE for ubiquitin-6xhis (9.6kDa), and all my hand-cast gels produce a smeared band (see image). I typically use 5% acrylamide for stacking, 15% for resolving gel layers. I don't ...
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What goes on in the muscle during static exercise?
Starfish opens mollusc's shell by applying static force for several hours. Mollusc gets tired and cannot hold shell closed.
Muscles spend some energy even when static exercise is done. But it is not ...
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