Biology by Bradford
Biology by Bradford · AP Biology · Unit 1.3

Lipids & Nucleic Acids

One family is defined by what water refuses to do with it. The other stores every instruction you will ever run. Both come down to hydrogen bonds — or the lack of them.

AP · U1.3CED 1.5–1.6Interactive lesson
Concept 01 · CED 1.5

The molecules water will not touch

Lipids have one thing in common and it is a negative: no polar groups worth speaking of. Everything else — storage, membranes, insulation — follows from being excluded by water.

Assembly

Not polymers

Glycerol plus three fatty acids, joined by ester bonds in a condensation reaction that releases three waters. Assembled, but not a repeating chain.

Saturation

Kinks change everything

A cis double bond bends the tail. Bent tails cannot pack, so the fat melts lower and the membrane stays fluid.

Energy

Twice the yield

Highly reduced C–H bonds mean roughly 38 kJ per gram against 17 for carbohydrate — and lipids store dry, without the water starch holds.

SATURATEDUNSATURATED · ONE CIS C=CCCSTRAIGHTKINKEDPACKS TIGHTLY · SOLID AT 20 °CCANNOT PACK · LIQUID AT 20 °C
One double bond is the whole story. Straight chains lie flush against each other and the attractions add up, so the fat is solid at room temperature; kinked chains cannot get close, so the same length of chain gives a liquid oil.
Diagram · interactive

The amphipathic molecule

Tap each part. Watch how one substitution — a phosphate in place of a fatty acid — turns a storage molecule into a membrane.

PHYDROPHILIC HEADglycerolESTER BONDSTWO TAILSBILAYERTAILS FACE INWARD, AWAY FROM WATERTAP A PART
Diagram

Two ends, two personalities

Tap the phosphate head, glycerol, the ester bonds, either tail, or the bilayer inset.

Signature interactive · CED 1.5

The fluidity bench

Four membranes, one variable at a time. Watch the spacing between the tails — that spacing is the fluidity.

Concept 02 · CED 1.6

Information, written in four letters

A nucleic acid is a chain of three-part monomers. Two of the three parts are identical all the way along — only the base changes, and that is where the information lives.

Monomer

Nucleotide

Phosphate, pentose sugar, nitrogenous base. Also the basis of ATP, NAD and FAD — the same subunit, different job.

Direction

5' to 3'

Phosphodiester bonds run from carbon 5' to carbon 3', so a strand has a head and a tail. Sequences are always written 5' to 3'.

Pairing

A–T and G–C

Purine to pyrimidine, held by hydrogen bonds: two for A–T, three for G–C. Weak enough to unzip, specific enough to copy.

DNA NUCLEOTIDEPSbaseO1'2'3'4'5'PHOSPHATEDEOXYRIBOSET A C GH at carbon 2'RNA NUCLEOTIDEPSbaseO1'2'3'4'5'PHOSPHATERIBOSEU A C GOH at carbon 2'SAME THREE PARTS · TWO DIFFERENCES
DNA and RNA nucleotides differ in exactly two places. The sugar carries a hydroxyl at carbon 2' in ribose and only a hydrogen in deoxyribose — that extra oxygen makes RNA chemically less stable, which is precisely what you want in a temporary copy. And RNA uses uracil where DNA uses thymine.
Diagram · interactive

Base pairing and directionality

Tap each part of the double helix, flattened out. The two pink arrows are the detail most students lose marks on.

PSPSPSPSPSPSPSPSPHOSPHODIESTER3'5'ATGCTACG5'3'3'5'5'→3'5'→3'TAP A PART
Diagram

Read it in both directions

Tap the backbone, a phosphodiester bond, an A–T pair, a G–C pair, the labelled ends, or the direction arrows.

Concept map · interactive

How it all hangs together

Tap a node to light up its connections. The pink dashed link joins the two halves of this lesson.

plus a polar headtypesone kinkraisesforms bilayerpolymerises totranscribed toA-T, G-Cwater excludes bothNonpolar tailsPhospholipidSaturatedUnsaturatedFluidityNucleotideDNARNABase pairing
Concept map

Tap a node

Two families, one shared principle: water decides what goes where.

Retrieval · drag and drop

Fill the gaps

Drag a term into a gap, or tap a term and then tap a gap. Two terms belong nowhere.

hydrophobicestersaturatedunsaturatedfluidityphosphodiesterantiparallelthree glycosidichydrogen

Fatty acid tails are nonpolar and therefore , and each is joined to glycerol by an bond. A tail with no carbon–carbon double bonds is and packs tightly, whereas a kinked tail cannot — which raises membrane . In a nucleic acid, nucleotides are joined by bonds between carbon 5' of one sugar and carbon 3' of the next. The two strands of DNA run in opposite directions, so they are described as . Guanine pairs with cytosine using hydrogen bonds.

Check yourself · AP-style

Six questions

Single best answer. You get the reasoning as soon as you commit.