Is all body chemistry basically simple?

From a Biological site:

All living things are made up of four classes of biological molecules: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids


Is that right?
Is everything in the body made from simple ingredients?

The nucleic acids are macromolecules made from

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carbohydrates,(same as Fructose, but a little more complicated)

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and nucleotides, which are purines

, and phosphates.

Can anyone see any molecule which the body uses, which could not be made from these bases.
Obviously we need metals as salts from eating them and some vitamins from the same source. Do we make all the purines?

 

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Most of the human body is made up of water, H2O, with cells consisting of 65-90% water by weight. Therefore, it isn't surprising that most of a human body's mass is oxygen. Carbon, the basic unit for organic molecules, comes in second. 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.

1.Oxygen (65%)
2.Carbon (18%)
3.Hydrogen (10%)
4.Nitrogen (3%)
5.Calcium (1.5%)
6.Phosphorus (1.0%)
7.Potassium (0.35%)
8.Sulfur (0.25%)
9.Sodium (0.15%)
10.Magnesium (0.05%)
11.Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
12.Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...nOC4Ag&usg=AFQjCNFyoa49ohQfZlvk6Kl4PEoUHddE0g

 

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Some of our proteins are hellish complicated, and small errors can lead to debilitating illnesses like sickle-cell anaemia. Although we are made of mostly oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, it is often found in very complex structures.

 

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... in the same way that all math is really simple because it's made up of only four kinds of operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

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Depending on what how low you want to go to qualify as "ingredients" For example in proteins there are 20 amino acids needed to make all the proteins in the body, that might sound simple but then there are post translation chemical modifications, stereochemistry, metal ligands, and then things start to get really complex despite a seemingly Lego like set of building blocks.

 

Even carbohydrates are very complex. I'd say that biological chemistry is the most complex chemistry.

 

How does the body make a metal ligand?

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Hemoglobin is a common metal-containing protein. The US National Library of Medicine describes the process for adding the iron to heme. A excerpt:

 

Yes start with the oxygen transporting proteins, they are always fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemoglobin#Other_oxygen-binding_proteins

 

These tiny laboratories, of which thousands could be placed at the full stop at the end of this sentence, are amazing.
The best chemists in nature are plants.
Constantly subject to death by eating,
they are evolutionary chemistry speeded up.

I wonder if a healthy leaf in a plant can pass an immunity to a predator or disease, to another leaf in the same plant without having to wait a generation.
It would seem like a good idea.Animals do it.

Any experiments done on this?
They would have to graft an immune leaf onto a susceptible plant.
Have plants got anything similar to antibodies?

 

IIRC, when you cut a limb off a tree, the tree deposites antifungal agents into the wood near the exposed surface. I'm going strictly on memory though.

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It'd be a good experiment for a school project.
Worthless for modern exam results of course, as not part of the syllabus

Variation within leaves would be beneficial.
And communication of immunity would be more so.

 

Thanks for the question.
I had nearly forgotten this thread, and I had to think a bit to remember what I was getting at.

Simple compared with what living beings can make from them.

Take vitamin B12, made by bacteria.

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How does a bacterium make such a complicated molecule from basic ingredients, at room temperature?
Does it have a substrate, on which chemicals in a soup attach themselves?
Or is it some kind of conveyor belt system, where specific molecules are brought as required?
How does it stop unwanted reactions from occurring?

 

Careful, Fraggle.

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One could be driven to the conclusion that you've never heard of peat based on your statement that I emphasized above. But I'm pretty certain that you *are* aware that there are two distinct "classes" (sources, actually) of coal.

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Is this a problem that has already been solved?
I've not heard much about it.

 

Well, Fraggle, I'm a but taken aback. I tried to be nice about it and even offered you a way to save face by mentioning that there was more than one type of coal. :shrug:

However, with this glaringly obvious attempt of your to twist the matter of my correction to something I didn't say nor even remotely implied - the quantity of it - I see no alternative but to state it clearly: Your statement, "there will never again be any coal" is TOTALLY incorrect. :bugeye:

Even though people in parts of the world abort the coal-forming process by harvesting peat, there are still areas where it's not interrupted. In fact, there's a little valley just over a mile from me where this is true. It's an active peat bog, fed primarily by leaves from hardwood trees and gets covered over every year with silt. The location and terrain is such that it has no appeal for any useful human purposes whatsoever; and as such, is not likely to be disturbed. And there are bound to be MANY locations just like it in other parts of the world.

 

Getting back to the real issue.
How the hell does a bacterium make vitamin B12?

In any case, you are both wrong.
All coal is first peat, then coal.

Coal's Formation
About 300 million years ago, plants and trees grew in swamps that covered much of the earth. As this vegetation died, it drifted down to the bottom of the swamps and formed peat, a soggy, spongelike material. The peat became buried and compressed under the earth's surface over a long period of time. Over millions of years and through the forces of heat and pressure, the peat became coal.

Some of the newest coal is only 1 million years old, and coal is still being formed. In fact, some regions in the United States—such as the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, and the Everglades in Florida—offer good coal-producing conditions today. As their plant life dies and is covered by silt, sand, and other materials, new coal beds may form.

http://www.teachcoal.org/aboutcoal/articles/coaljourney.html