Essential nutrients
These are the organic compounds present in the food that provide nourishment essential for the development and growth of our body. Nutrients not only provide us with the required energy to carry out various biological processes but are also the building blocks for repair and growth in our bodies.
Vitamins
The vitamins are organic molecules required in low concentration for the proper functioning of the body. They cannot be generated in the organism and are taken into the body through the diet. The lack of proper vitamins results in diverse deficiency disorders. They are thus called essential nutrients. The important vitamins are vitamin A, vitamin B complex, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin K, and vitamin E.
Carbohydrates are a class of biological macro-molecules that are important for day-to-day functions of all living cells.
Based on the number of sugar units in a carbohydrate molecule, they can be divided as monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, or polysaccharides.
Below are some of the properties of carbohydrates in living systems -
1. Role of carbohydrates in raw material
Carbohydrates (especially glucose) is the raw material for more complex carbohydrates like starch and glycogen. Starch is a complex polymer of branched amylose and amylopectin (which are made of glucose monomers), whereas glycogen is a multibranched polysaccharide of glucose. Starch is the main energy storage molecule in plants, while glycogen is the main storage energy molecule in animals.
Carbohydrates like glucose also acts as the raw material for products such as ethanol in certain microbes.
2.Role of carbohydrates in structural support.
Carbohydrates have a larger role to play in the structural support of plants, than animals. Some of the important carbohydrates like Cellulose (polymer made of glucose), hemicellulose (polymer of glucose and pentose sugars), xylan, inulin etc. are important constituents of the plant cell wall. Along with Lignin, these carbohydrates confer mechanical strength to the plant cells.
Modified carbohydrates like Peptiglycan, n-acetyl glucosamine are important structural components of bacterial cell wall.
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