Principles of biological chemical - physics.
Water as a biomolecule. Colligative properties. Dissociation, pK, biological buffers. Elements of thermodynamics and biochemical kinetics.
Descriptive Biochemistry
Amino acids: classification, structure and properties. Optical activity. Dissociation and titration curves. The Isoelectric point.
Chemistry and general properties of proteins. Classification of proteins. Structure of proteins. The Isoelectric point. Simple and conjugated proteins. Hemoglobin and myoglobin: structure and functions. Oxygenation curve. The methemoglobin. Pathological hemoglobins.
The chemistry of carbohydrates: monosaccharides, disaccharides and polysaccharides. Mutarotation. Isomerism and stereoisomerism. Structure and properties of carbohydrates of biological interest. The glycoproteins.
The chemistry of lipids. Classification. Neutral fats. Fatty acids. Steroids and sterols: bile acids, cholesterol. The phospholipids. Lipoproteins.
Vitamins. Generally, definition and relationship with coenzyme activity. The fat-soluble vitamins ( A, D , K, E ). Water-soluble vitamins. Vitamin C. The B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, nicotinamide, pyridoxal, biotin, p-aminobenzoic acid , folic acid, cobalamin).
Dynamics Biochemistry.
Enzymes: general properties. Holoenzyme, apoenzyme, cofactors. The active site. Enzyme-substrate complex. Specificity. Principles of enzyme kinetics. Equation and Michaelis constant. Enzyme inhibition. Allostery. Classification of enzymes.
Glucose metabolism. Digestion and absorption of carbohydrates. Synthesis and degradation of glycogen. Anabolism and catabolism of glucose. Mechanisms of regulation of glucose metabolism.
Lipid metabolism. Digestion and absorption. Anabolism and catabolism of fatty acids. Ketogenesis. Regulation of lipid metabolism. Mention on the metabolism of phospholipids and steroids. Protein metabolism. Digestion and absorption. Enzymatic hydrolysis of proteins. Mechanism of action of some peptidase.
Catabolism of amino acids. Urea synthesis. Purine catabolism. Regulation of amino acid metabolism. Heme catabolism. Protein synthesis. Citric acid cycle (Krebs Cycle).
Biological oxidations and bioenergetics.
Energetic meaning of oxidative reactions. The redox potential. The mitochondrion: shuttle mechanisms for the transport of electrons, the respiratory chain and the ATP formation mechanism ( Mitchell theory). Energy reserves. Uncoupling agents. ROS. Lipid peroxidation. Antioxidant enzymes.
Applied Biochemistry.
Most important chromatography techniques for the separation of proteins (gel filtration, hydrophobic interaction, ion exchange, affinity) . Applications of UV-vis spectroscopy to the analysis of biomolecules. General aspects of proteomics: electrophoretic separation of proteins, western blot analysis, 2D–PAGE. General aspects of mass spectrometry for proteomics and metabolomics. Mass spectrometry techniques for protein identification: soft ion sources (ESI, MALDI), different mass analyzers (TOF, quadrupole, ion trap). Peptide fragmentation. Protein identification by " peptide mass fingerprinting " and database search.
