The laws of chemistry affect animals and plants in many ways because the operations of every cell are, at the simplest level, chemical operations.
Biochemistry describes the many ways that chemistry is involved with maintaining life inside the cell, and also outside the cell, all around the organism.
The basis of all life is the translation of the genetic code into the chemicals of life, in particular, into the formation of proteins in particular ways.
All cells contain lipids, proteins, nucleic acids and carbohydrates: some are absorbed, others are formed within the cell from absorbed material.
A simple sugar is a monosaccharide: two monosaccharides can be joined to form a disaccharide such as sucrose, which can be split by various enzymes.
Larger chains of monosaccharides can be formed: these are called oligosaccharides and polysaccharides. These are important in food storage in many cases.
The properties of a carbon compound can be altered by changing or adding a functional group which changes its size, shape and charge distribution.
Amino acids have common and different parts: the different parts make the proteins different, and the common parts allow the amino acids to form peptide bonds.
Much protein chemistry is explained by the lock and key model, where a protein must have the right shape and charge distribution to fit another molecule.
In 1934, J. D. Bernal showed that giant molecules, such as proteins, can be studied by applying X-ray crystallography to the crystalline material.
In 1952, Sanger, Tuppy, and Thompson completed their chromatographic analysis of the insulin amino acid sequence. Sanger and Tuppy reported the B chain in 1951.
Fred Sanger and Hans Tuppy reported the 30 residues of the insulin B-chain in 1951, now many million bases are added each year, making bioinformatics essential.
In 1953, Max Perutz and John Kendrew determined the structure of haemoglobin using X-ray diffraction patterns taken from crystallized haemoglobin.
The genetic code of any organism specifies the construction of proteins by setting the order in which amino acids are strung together in the polypeptide.
DNA is transcribed to messenger RNA and that is then translated into a protein, following the standard pattern of the genetic code in all organisms.
In 1883, Pierre Émile Duclaux introduces the custom of naming an enzyme by adding "-ase" to the name of the substrate on which its action was first reported.
In 1897, Gabriel Bertrand, studied the hardening of lacquer (laccase) and used 'coenzyme' for inorganic substances necessary to activate certain enzymes.
In 1935, Rudolf Schoenheimer used deuterium-labelled fat compounds to examine the fat storage system of rats and showed that about half the fat was stored.
In 1939, Ruben, William Zev Hassid and Martin David Kamen first applied radioactive tracers to following the biochemical steps involved in photosynthesis.
In 1941, Ruben, Randall, Martin David Kamen, and Hyde reported that the oxygen liberated in photosynthesis comes from water, and not from carbon dioxide.
Some chemicals interfere with metabolic pathways within living cells: if they and their interference cause serious damage, we call these chemicals poisons.
Some poisons are useful as pesticides, which selectively kill problem organisms such as microbes, plants and insects, but they can also cause problems.
Every poison can have an LD-50 calculated for it, the concentration which will, in theory at least, kill half of a test population exposed to it.