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Biochemistry Organic Chemistry

A Brief Guide to the Twenty Common Amino Acids

The proteins that make up living organisms are huge molecules, but they’re composed of tinier building blocks, known as amino acids. There are over 500 amino acids found in nature, yet, of these, the human genetic code only directly codes for 20. Every protein in your body is made up of some linked combination of these amino […]

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Organic Chemistry

Benzene Derivatives in Organic Chemistry

Benzene is a hugely important compound in organic chemistry. It consists of six carbon atoms joined together in a ring, with a hydrogen atom bonded to each carbon; by replacing one or more of these hydrogens with a functional group, a large number of different compounds can be formed. This graphic looks at a selection […]

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Organic Chemistry

A Guide to Simple Heterocycles in Organic Chemistry

We’ve already examined the functional groups that can be present in organic molecules in a previous post; here, we take a look one step further, at heterocycles. Heterocycles are hugely important in organic chemistry – they make up more than half of all known organic compounds. Caffeine is a prime example of an everyday chemical that […]

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Organic Chemistry

A Brief Guide to Types of Isomerism in Organic Chemistry

In organic chemistry, isomers are molecules with the same molecular formula (i.e. the same number of atoms of each element), but different structural or spatial arrangements of the atoms within the molecule. The reason there are such a colossal number of organic compounds – more than 10 million – is in part down to isomerism. This […]

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Organic Chemistry

A Brief Guide to Types of Organic Chemistry Formulae

Back to basics with today’s graphic, with a look at the different ways compounds in organic chemistry can be represented. Obviously, if you’re a chemist, these will all be second nature, but as was quite fairly pointed out with regards to the food chemistry graphics, if you’re not well versed in chemistry, all of those […]

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Organic Chemistry

Aromatic Chemistry Reactions Map

To complement the the Organic Reaction Map posted a week or so ago, here’s a reaction map looking at reactions that allow you to vary the substituents on a benzene ring. This was a far larger undertaking than expected; the bulk of the work on the organic reaction map was done in the space of […]