Lesson 3: The Four W's

WHAT IS GOING ON!?

 

The Four W’s of Biochemistry 

 

Brought to you by: A Biochem Student

So by this point you have (hopefully) gotten everything that you need for this class. (By this point you also might be close to the end of the class and desperate to improve your grade to the point where you are actually reading this Blog). Whatever your reason for reading this is it all comes down to GETTING THE GRADE! And in order to get the grade you need to know what is important and what is not.

So how do you figure out what is important or not? Well other then going to class and figuring out what your teacher emphasizes in lecture there are a few other ways to find what you need to know. These are:

THE FOUR W’s

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You probably remember these from your parents when you were trying to go out with your friends. “Where are you going? What are you going to be doing? Why are you going? When are you coming home?”

Well biochemistry has something similar: for each mechanism that you learn you want to ask yourself these five important questions. ( I will be addressing them in each following lesion also.)

Where is the pathway happening?

            Is it in the liver or the muscle? The cytoplasm or the mitochondria? 

When is the pathway active?

            Does this happen after you have eaten a huge whale or when you are starving to death on some desert island?

Why is the pathway present?

            Is it so you don’t end up with syrup blood or to make sure ammonia in your blood doesn’t kill you? 

WHAT CAN GO WRONG?

            If you damage this enzyme or the DNA coding for this enzyme can the person still live? Is there a disease associated with this problem? Is it something like lactose intolerance or is it something more problematic like PKU?

These are your four W’s of biochemistry and from this point onward it is important that you are able to answer these questions for each of the pathways that both your teacher and I will be going over in the following lessons. By doing this you will get a good feel for what is important and what can be skimmed over.

I will be addressing these questions for glycolysis in the next lesson, so get your pencils ready because it’s time to start the real biochemistry now!