The three main themes I found throughout this course were amino acids, proteins and enzymes. Without these three components, nothing would work. Amino acids are necessary to produce polypeptide chains which are called proteins. Enzymes are necessary to allow a protein to function or stop functioning and processes in the body occur or stop occurring.
In general biology you discuss proteins, amino acids and enzymes some, but it wasn't until this course that I really understood how involved they are in the daily functions of the body. For example, glycolysis and the citric acid cycle are covered in a very broad sense through biology class, a little more in depth during microbiology, but really in depth with biochemistry and linking the knowledge of where the energy that our body uses is produced and which produces the most for our body. Further, for either glycolysis or the citric acid cycle to occur, we need the enzymes to convert molecules from one form to another through phosporylations, oxidations and reductions.
Throughout this semester, I really discovered that biochemistry is not scary because the word chemistry is in the title. This course really connected the dots between previous science classes I have taken. Furthermore, I found that I really enjoyed the course and the material. I have truly enjoyed all that I was able to learn with this course.
