Introduction to organic structure of molecules
Organic compound is something essential in our everyday life, thus it is crucial to study organic chemistry including properties, behavior, characteristics etc. There is one aspect we cannot forget that is the structure of organics. Why is it so important? The structure of a molecule determine the function, properties and behavior. However, there a lot of organic molecules out there which often make us confuse. In order to obtain basic information of organic molecule, we need to learn interpreting the structure of organic and it is good idea as well to learn drawing the structure.
There are more than 100 elements in the periodic table as we may all know and realize. Many molecules contain more than 100 atoms, for example palytoxin. It is a naturally occurring compound with potential anticancer activity. It contains 129 carbon atoms, 221 hydrogen atoms, 54 oxygen atoms and 3 nitrogen atoms. By only seeing the structure itself, we can draw conclusion about variation of the structure. And these variations of structure which have built any single living organism, including human being.
Usually, a device called X-Ray Cristallography is used to determine the structure of organic compound. In fact, we can confirm by this tool that actually inside atomic chain in organic molecule, the bond between C atoms actually form an angle, not straight line. We will discuss that later.
Now, let’s talk about hydrocarbon frameworks and functional groups. These elements are crucial and vital, without these, there won’t be organic compounds!
One thing we should be aware of is that there’s always a variation of organic compounds. For example, glycine only has two carbon atoms, alanine has only three carbon atoms and phenylalanine has nine carbon atoms. Each of these has its own hydrocarbon framework and functional groups. See three pictures below for each element.
Glycine
Alanine
Phenylalanine
You can see carbon atoms which are bonded with H atoms and other type of atoms, in this case is N. However, other type of atoms can refer to other atom such as O, S, P, Si, etc.
The arrangement, the structure and the number of carbon and hydrogen atoms determine the chemistry of the compound than from other type of atoms. However, other type of atoms have significant role to determine the way the molecule works.
