3 major themes, how are the connected to more than one topic and what you knew before, what knowledge have you gained?

Three major themes that were covered in this course were biomolecules such as lipids and amino acids, proteins etc...,DNA transcription and translation, and metabolic cycles, such as Glycolysis. Each of these processes, in reality, support and rely on each other.

Biomolecules are any organic molecules, including large polymeric molecules, such as proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids as well as small molecules, such as primary metabolites, secondary metabolites, and natural products. Biomolecules consist of primaily Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen and Oxygen. These biomolecules are all linked to DNA formation as well as metabolic pathways. I had a pretty decent understanding of this before this course, and actually learning more about it was helpful to me.

For DNA replication, translation is when the coded strand is being used for the new DNA strand to be formed. Each 3 bases form a codon that then makes up a certain protein. Throughout this course, this process was looked at thoroughly to the level of the subunit(s) on the strand bringing together anti - codon tRNA that also had the given amino acid attached. tRNA is what aids in the actual protein formation as it transfers specific amino acids to a growing peptide chain. This covalent linkage is catalyzed by an enzyme called aminoacyl tRNA synthetase. I have always been interested in how DNA works and how our cells replicate DNA. Learning more about this in Biochemistry helped me greatly to fully understand this process.

Each of these biomolecules are also utilized in the different metabolic processes that were covered in this course, such as Glycolysis, Electron Transport Chain, Oxidative Phosphorylation, and Lipid Metabolism. This is the area I knew most about due to the fact that I have gone over Glycolysis in great detail in my General Microbiology course, although this focused on prokaryotes, it was good to get a sense of how this process works in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.