Study Guide: Introduction to Diabetes & Biological Molecules

To-Do Date: Aug 28 at 11:59am

Cartoon

 

This cartoon shows ''complex carbohydrates'' thinking deep and meaningful thoughts such as ''What is my purpose?'' and "What is the meaning of life?" After this week, you would have a different definition of a complex carbohydrate- and you could draw it out using hexagons as your symbol for sugars- give it a try. 

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In order to understand diabetes, we need to think about our food and our bodies both at the large scale (organs like our stomach or pancreas) but also on increasingly smaller scales ( like the molecules that make up our food, or the cells that make up our organs). Here is a flowchart that helps me to organize my thinking on the subject. This week we are going to focus on the first parts of this flowchart: Food--> Subunits

 

Text description of Diabetes Flowchart graphic (Word doc) Download Text description of Diabetes Flowchart graphic (Word doc)

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Learning Objectives: By the end of the week you should be able to .

• Explain the difference between organic and inorganic molecules
• Identify the 4 important categories of organic molecules that are biological molecules: 
• Identify their subunits
• Explain why they are important to living organisms ( what they are used for)
• Identify important inorganic molecules 
• Identify positive vs. negative ions.