Monomers and Polymers

Introduction

What are monomers?

What are polymers?


Introduction

Life in its ecosystems, species and organisms has been expressed, and continues to do so, in a great variety of ways.

Yet on the biochemical level, deep down into the tissue, cells and microscopic components that make up these living things, the basic building blocks are the same! A bit like how everything is just made up of atoms or quarks or just empty space really but it somehow ends up looking really interesting to us.

Some of these basic building blocks are called monomers (“single part”, Greek) and join together to create bigger molecules called polymers (“many parts”? I don’t know, I’m making this up).

Examples of monomers that we’ll go into more depth in later topics include monosaccharides such as glucose, amino acids such as methionine, and nucleotides which make up DNA…..

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