Before I dive into my reaction, I need to set the stage a little.
Organic chemistry was my first chemistry love. Oh, the mechanisms, the reactions, the… electron pushing!
But what really sealed the deal between me and chemistry was my first biochemistry class. I had an “Aha!” moment when my professor threw a transparency up that showed how proteins are just really stinking big molecules.
So, you mean all those colorful blobs with strange names like “Golgi apparatus” and “mitochondria” that I memorized in high school biology— those were just molecules all along?
Yup. I discovered that so many everyday occurences all boiled down to chemistry. Everything is made of chemicals. That’s right, I said it. There’s no such thing as chemical-free!
My biochem professor was great at building in examples of how science intersects with everyday life. One day we learned about the structure of hair. It’s made of keratin, a fibrous structural protein that is also found in skin and nails. Disulfide bonds between polypeptide chains in keratin molecules are what give your hair strength and rigidity.