Ray F. Evert • Susan E.

Eichhorn

Raven Biology of Plants

Eighth Edition
CHAPTER 2
The Molecular Composition
of Plant Cells
Lecture presentation by Dr. Mohammad Brake
Jerash University

© 2013 W. H. Freeman and Company

 chapter outline:
• Organic Molecules
• Carbohydrates
• Lipids
• Proteins
• Nucleic Acids
• Secondary
Metabolites

As chili peppers ripen, their carotenoid pigments are produced.

Capsaicin causes the burning sensation when we eat the chili
peppers, deters browsing mammals but is not detected by birds,
Everything on earth is made up of chemical elements in various combinations.
Elements are substances that cannot be broken down into other substances
by ordinary means.
Of the 92 elements that occur naturally on Earth, only six were selected in the
course of evolution.
These six elements—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and
sulfur (CHNOPS)—make up 99 percent of the weight of all living matter.
Water (H2O), makes up more than half of all living matter and more than 90
percent of the weight of most plant tissues.
Potassium (K+), magnesium (Mg2+),and calcium (Ca2+), important as they
are, account for only about 1 percent.
Almost all the rest of a living organism is composed of organic molecules—
that is, of molecules that contain carbon.
A single bacterial cell contains some 5000 different kinds of organic
molecules, and an animal or plant cell has at least twice that many.
Organic Molecules:
The special bonding properties of carbon permit the formation of a great
variety of organic molecules.
Four different types make up most of the dry weight of living organisms.
These four are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.
Carbohydrates: are the most abundant organic molecules in nature and are
the primary energy-storage molecules in most living organisms, and they
form a variety of structural components of living cells (cell wall).
There are three principal kinds of carbohydrates:
• Monosaccharides (“single, or simple, sugars”): glucose.
• Disaccharides (“two sugars”): sucrose (table sugar).
• Polysaccharides (“many sugars”): cellulose.
Macromolecules (large molecules), that are made up of similar or identical
small subunits are known as polymers (“many parts”).
The individual subunits of polymers are called monomers (“single parts”).
Polymerization is the stepwise linking of monomers into polymers.
Monosaccharides Function as Building Blocks and Sources of Energy
Monosaccharides, or single sugars, are the simplest carbohydrates.
Monosaccharides can be described by the formula (CH2O)n, where n can be
as small as 3, as in C3H6O3, or as large as 7, as in C7H14O7.
Carbohydrate: means carbon with water added.
Monosaccharides are the building blocks—the monomers—from which living
cells construct disaccharides, polysaccharides, and other essential
carbohydrates.
Glucose is the form in which sugar is transported in the circulatory system of
humans and other vertebrate animals.
 Most common

Several common monosaccharides

Monosaccharide has a carbon chain (the carbon skeleton) with a hydroxyl
group (—OH) attached to every carbon atom except one. The remaining
carbon atom is in the form of a carbonyl group (—C=O). Both these groups
are hydrophilic (water-loving(.
Monosaccharides, as well as many other carbohydrates, readily dissolve in
water.
Monosaccharides are normally found in a ring form when dissolved in water
(cells).
The Disaccharide Sucrose Is a Transport Form of Sugar in Plants
Sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose, is the form in
which sugar is transported in most plants from the photosynthetic cells
(primarily in the leaves), where it is produced, to other parts of the plant body.
Sucrose we consume as table sugar is commercially harvested from sugar
beets (enlarged roots) and sugarcane (stems).
Polysaccharides Function as Storage Forms of Energy or as Structural
Materials
Polysaccharides are polymers made up of monosaccharides linked together in
long chains.
Starch, the primary storage polysaccharide in plants, consists of chains of
glucose molecules.
There are two forms of starch:
Amylose:unbranched molecule
Amylopectin: branched molecule
Amylose and amylopectin are stored as starch grains within plant cells.
Glycogen, the common storage polysaccharide in prokaryotes, fungi, and
animals, is also made up of chains of glucose molecules.
Glycogen resembles amylopectin but is more highly branched.
In some plants—wheat, rye, and barley—the principal storage
polysaccharides in leaves and stems are polymers of fructose called fructans.
Sucrose formation and degradation:
Formation: dehydration synthesis
Degradation: hydrolysis
Polysaccharides must be hydrolyzed to monosaccharides and disaccharides
before they can be used as energy sources or transported through living
systems.
In plants, the principal component of the cell wall is the important
polysaccharide known as cellulose.
Wood is about 50 percent cellulose, and cotton fibers are nearly pure
cellulose.
Cellulose is a polymer composed of monomers of glucose.
Starch and glycogen can be readily used as fuels by almost all kinds of living
organisms, but only some microorganisms—certain prokaryotes—and a very
few animals, such as silverfish, can hydrolyze cellulose.
Cows can use cellulose for energy only because it is broken down by
microorganisms that live in their digestive tracts.
Starch and glycogen are both made up entirely of alpha-glucose subunits.
Cellulose consists entirely of beta-glucose subunits.
Cellulose molecules are long and unbranched.
Cellulose is impervious to the enzymes that easily break down starch and
glycogen.
Plant cell wall containing two other complex, branched polysaccharides,
namely, hemicelluloses and pectins.
Hemicelluloses stabilize the cell wall by hydrogen bonding to the cellulose
microfibrils and Pectins make up most of the middle lamella.
 Cellulose
Chitin is another important structural polysaccharide. It is the
principal component of fungal cell walls and also of the relatively
hard outer coverings, or exoskeletons of insects.
Lipidssecnatsbus ekiltaf dna staf era :.
They are generally hydrophobic.
They are insoluble in water.
They serve as energy-storage molecules—usually in the form of fats or
oils—and also for structural purposes, as in the case of phospholipids and
waxes.
Lipid molecules are very large, they are not macromolecules, because they
are not formed by the polymerization of monomers.
Fats and Oils Are Triglycerides That Store Energy
Some plants also store food energy as oils, especially in seeds and fruits, as
in the olives produced by olive trees.

Storage of oil and starch: Two cells from the fleshy, underground stem (corm)
of the quillwort Isoetes muricata .
Animals convert excess sugar to fat.
Fats and oils contain a higher proportion of energy-rich carbon-hydrogen
bonds than do carbohydrates.
Fats and oils contain more chemical energy.
Fats yield about 9.1 kilocalories (kcal) per gram when oxidized to release
energy, compared with 3.8 kcal per gram of carbohydrate or 3.1 kcal per
gram of protein.
Fats and oils have similar chemical structures.
Each consists of three fatty acid molecules bonded to one glycerol molecule.
The bonds between fatty acid and glycerol formed by dehydration synthesis.
Fat and oil molecules known as Triglycerides contain no polar (hydrophilic)
groups.
Nonpolar molecules (lipids) are hydrophobic, or insoluble in water.
A fatty acid that has no double bonds between carbon atoms is said to be
saturated.
A fatty acid that contains carbon atoms joined by double bonds is said to be
unsaturated.
The physical nature of a fat is determined by the length of the carbon chains
in the fatty acids and by the extent to which the fatty acids are saturated or
unsaturated.
The presence of double bonds in unsaturated fats prevents close packing
among molecules.
Unsaturated fats tend to be liquid (oily) at room temperature.
Saturated fats are solid at room temperature (palm oil).
Animal fats are solid at room temperature because they are saturated.
In general fats are solid at room temperature and oils are liquid.
Phospholipids Are Modified Triglycerides That Are Components of Cellular
Membranes
phospholipids play very important structural roles, particularly in cellular membranes.
why phospholipids are modified triglycerides?
Because they have a phosphate group in carbon number 3 instead of fatty acid.
Phospholipids composed of:
•1 glycerol
•2 fatty acids
•1 phosphate group (negatively charged).
As a result, the phosphate end of the molecule is hydrophilic
and therefore soluble in water, whereas the fatty acid end is
hydrophobic and insoluble.
If phospholipids are added to water, they tend to form a film
along its surface, with their hydrophilic "heads" under the water
and their hydrophobic "tails" protruding above the surface.
If phospholipids are surrounded by water, as in the watery
interior of the cell, they tend to align themselves in a double
layer—a phospholipid bilayer—with their phosphate heads
directed outward and their fatty acid tails oriented toward one
another.
This arrangements are important to the structure of cellular
membranes and also to their functions.
Cutin, Suberin, and Waxes Are Lipids That Form Barriers to Water Loss
The function of cutin and suberin is structural component of many plant cell
wall.
Cutin, Suberin, and Waxes form a matrix or barrier that help prevent the loss
of water and other molecules from plant surfaces.
Cuticle layer: is a layer composed of wax embedded in cutin covers the outer
walls of epidermal cells of leave and stems, this layer reduces the losses of
water and other molecules.
Suberin is a major component of the walls of cork cells (the cells that form
the outermost layer of bark).
Waxes are the most water-repellent of the lipids.
Steroids Stabilize Cell Membranes and Also Function as Hormones
Steroids are other classes of lipids with four hydrocarbon rings in their
skeleton.
Hydrocarbon chains of various lengths and hydroxyl and carbonyl groups
attached to the skeleton of steroids make a large variety structures.
Cholesterol is an example of animal steroids.
The functions of steroids are:
Component of membranes, where they stabilize the phospholipids.
Functions as a hormones: sterol antheridiol serves as a sex attractant in the
water mold Acblya bisexualis
Proteins:
Proteins are among the most abundant organic molecules and makeup
about 50% of the dry weight of most living organism except plants (due to
the large present of cellulose).
Proteins perform many functions, but in their structure, they are polymers
of nitrogen-containing molecules known as amino acids arranged in a
linear sequence.
20 different amino acids are used by living organism to form proteins.
Protein molecules are large and complex containing several hundred or
more of amino acid monomers.
There are a large numbers of protein kinds? Why?
Organisms synthesize a very small fraction of the protein that is
theoretically possible.
E. coli contains 600-800 kinds of protein while a plant or animal cells
contains several times that number.
A complex organism has at least several thousand different kinds of
proteins each have special structure and function.
The largest concentration of protein is found in cereals seed (40%),
which used as amino acid storage needed for embryo growth.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins:
Protein is made up of a precise arrangement of amino acids.
All amino acids have the same basic structure.
The R group determinates the identity of each amino acid.
The 20 amino acids are the same in all living organisms (bacteria, plant,
fungi, and animal).
Amino acids are grouped to their polarity and electric charge, which
determine the properties of amino acids and the proteins formed from them.
Through dehydration synthesis reaction, the polypeptide (chain of amino
acids) formed when the N group of one amino acid links to the carboxyl
group of the adjacent amino acids by the removal of one molecule of water
and the covalent bond formed called peptide bond.
A proteins structure can be described in terms of levels of organization
The linear sequence of amino acids is known as the primary structure.
Each polypeptide has different primary structure consisting of unique
sequence of amino acids.
The sequence of amino acids determines the structure and the function of the
protein and any change in the amino acid may alter or destroy the way in
which the protein functions.
Polypeptide chain is assembled in the cell; interactions among the various
amino acids along the chain cause it to fold into a pattern known as its
secondary structure.
Because peptide bonds are rigid, a chain is limited in the number of shapes.
The two most common secondary structures are:
• Alpha helix: H-bonds formed
• Beta pleated sheet: H-bonds formed
Alpha helix and beta pleated sheets are known as
fibrous proteins.
Fibrous proteins provide support and shape in
organisms.
Tertiary structures (globular proteins) are the results of folding of secondary
structure.
The folding could be spontaneous or controlled by certain proteins
eg: molecular chaperones: proteins inhibiting the incorrect folding.
Globular proteins are complex and some of them have more than one type
of secondary structure.
Most active proteins (enzymes) are globular proteins.
The tertiary structure forms as a result of complex interactions among R
groups in the individual amino acids.
The interactions include:
1. Attractions among amino acids with polar R groups
2. Repulsion between non polar R groups with the surrounding water.
3. Sulfur-containing R groups can form covalent bond with each other (disulfide
bridges)
Most of the interactions that give a protein its tertiary structure are not covalent
and are therefore weak and can be easily disrupted by changes in the physical or
chemical environment.
Denaturation: the structural break down of tertiary structure
eg: coagulation of egg white when egg cooked
When proteins denatured, the polypeptide chains unfold, causing loss of the
biological activity of the protein.
Many proteins are composed of more than one polypeptide chain.
The interactions of two or more polypeptide are called quaternary structure.
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions in cells
Enzymes (catalysts) are globular proteins that accelerate the rat of chemical
reactions by lowering the energy of activation.
Enzymes remain unchanged in the reaction and used in very low concentration
and for several times.
Enzymes are named by adding the ending ASE to the root of the name of
substrate.
eg: amylase catalyzes the hydrolysis of amylose.
Nucleic Acids:
Are a long chain of nucleotides.
Nucleotides are molecules consist of three components:
1. Phosphate group
2. Five carbon sugar
3. Nitrogen containing base
The sugar may be either ribose or deoxyribose.
The nitrogen bases are: adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, and uracil.
Two types of nucleic acids are found in living organisms (DNA, RNA).
RNA and DNA are formed from their subunits in dehydration synthesis
reactions.
DNA is a very long molecule and is the largest in cells.
DNA and RNA play different biological roles:
DNA: carrier of genetic messages (genes) which are inherited from parents.
RNA: involved in the synthesis of proteins based on the genetic information
provided by DNA.
ATP is the cell’s energy currency:
The addition of two phosphate groups to the nucleotides make them the
carriers of the energy needed to power the chemical reactions occurring
within the cells.
ATP: is the principle energy carrier molecule in living organisms.
When ATP hydrolyzed give ADP and energy, this energy can be used to
power other reactions.
ATP formed during respiration when glucose is oxidized to CO2 and water.
Secondary metabolites:
Metabolites are compounds produced by plants.
Metabolites are primary and secondary.
Primary metabolites are molecules that are found in all plants cells and are
necessary for the life of the plant like:
•Amino acids
•Glucose
•Vitamins
•Nucleotides
•Ethanol
Secondary metabolites: are not essential to cell growth or function and
produced in late growth.
Secondary metabolites: have different rules like:
•Chemical signals that enable the plant to respond to environmental change.
•Defense of the plants that produce them against pathogens.
•Protection from radiation.
•Aid in pollen and seed dispersal.
Examples of secondary metabolites:
Antibiotics, Pigments, Toxins, Alkaloids, Terpenoids, Phenolics
Secondary metabolites are produced in specific organ, tissue or cell type at specific
stage of development (eg. Phytoalexins are antimicrobial compound produced after
wounding or attack of bacteria or fungi).
Secondary metabolites are produced in one part of the plant and stored in another.
Alkaloids Are Alkaline Nitrogenous Compounds That Include Morphine,
Cocaine, Caffeine, Nicotine, and Atropine
Alkaloids are important for their pharmacological or medicinal effects.
Morphine:
the first alkaloids to be identified in 1806
Morphine produced from opium poppy plants.
Morphine is used as pain reliever, but excessive use of this drug can lead to
addiction.
Cocaine: comes from coca shrub which lives in Bolivia and Peru.
Caffeine: stimulant molecule found in plant such as coffee, tea, and cocoa.
The seedling has high concentration of caffeine which kills insects and fungi.
Seedling released caffeine which prevent growth of other seedlings this process
called allelopathy.
Nicotine: stimulant molecule obtained from the leaves of tobacco plants.
Toxic alkaloid
Produced in the root of the plant and transported to the leaves.
Nicotine: is synthesized in response to wounding.
Atropine: obtained from Egyptian henbane.
Atropine used today as a cardiac stimulant and other things.
Terpenoids are composed of isoprene units and include essential oils,
taxol, rubber and cardiac glycosides.
Found in all plants.
The largest class of secondary metabolites (22000 compounds)
Isoprene (C5H8) is simplest terpenoides.
Terpenoids classified a cording to the number of isoprene.
A single plant can produced many terpenoids at different locations within the
plant for a variety of purposes and at different times during development.
Isoperene: simplest and familiar.
Isoperene is a gas emitted in large quantities during light from carbon dioxide
recently converted to organic compound by photosynthesis.
Functions:
1. Responsible for the bluish haze that hovers over wood hills and
mountains in summer.
2. Aid the plants to cape with heat on the hot days.
3. Stabilizing photosynthetic membranes within the cells.
Essential oils: many plants produced highly volatile essential oils like
menthol which produced in trichomes (glandular hairs, which are outgrowth of
epidermis).
Functions:
1. Deter herbivores
2. Protection of against fungi and bacteria attack.
3. Allelopathic
4. Attract insect pollinators to the flower.
Taxol: obtained from the bark of yew tree.
The extraction of taxol from the bark kill the plant and the amount extracted is
very little.
Taxol now extracted from other parts of other taxus species.
Taxol used for treatment of ovary and breast cancer.
Rubber:
The largest known terpenoid
Composed of 400-100000 isoperine
units
Obtained from the milky fluid (latex) of
hevea trees
In hevea, rubber may be 40-50% of
the latex
Cardiac glycosides:
Obtained from foxgloves plants
Poisonous terpenoides
Medicinally reduce the heartbeat
Cardiac glycosides provide an
effective defense against herbivores.
Terpenoids could be:
Photosynthetic pigment (cartenoids).
Hormones (gibberellins, ABA)
Structural component (sterols).
Electron carriers (plastoquinone).
Phenolics include flavonoids, tannins, lignins, and salicylic acid.
Phenolics are compound made up of:
Aromatic ring (ring of 6C containing 3 double bonds).
Hydroxyl group.
They are the most studied secondary metabolites.
They are present in most plants and accumulate in all plant parts.
Flavonoids:
The largest group of plant phenolic compounds
Water-soluble pigments present in the vacuoles of plant cells.
Flavonoids found in red wine and grape juice reduce the cholesterol level in
the blood.
Flavonoids are different classes like:
Anthocyanins (red, purple, blue).
Flavones and flavonols (yellowish, colorless)
Colorless flavones and flavonols form complexes with anthocyanins and
metal ions and give the flower the blue color (the phenomenon called co-
pigmentation).
Flower pigments attract pollinators.
Flavonoids affect how plants interact with other organisms.
Flavonoids provide protection against damage from ultraviolet radiation.
Tannins:
Phenolic compound present of high concentration in vacuoles of plant cells
Deterrents to herbivore feeding in angiosperms
Astringent taste of tannins is repellent to insects
Tannins used to tan leather, denaturating protein of the leather and protecting
if from bacterial attack
Lignins: deposited in the cell wall not in the vacuoles
The most abundant organic molecule after cellulose on earth
Polymer composed of three monomers
Lignins increase the strength of the cell wall (lignification)
Lignifications (lignin deposition) played role in the evolution of terrestrial
plants
Lignin are waterproofs the cell wall
Lignin deposited in response to fungal attack
Salicylic acid:
The active ingredient in aspirin
Obtain from the bark of salix trees
Salicylic acid help plants against pathogenic attacks
The End