Question

Discuss the importance of hydrogen bonds in the chemistry of the cell.

Answer 1

Hygrogen bonding is responsible for solvent nature of water. Water is essential component in a cell. Hydrogen bond responsible for the structure of biomolecules which are essential component of cell strucutre and function. Human body is about 70% water. All the life process occur in cytosol which contain water in its major part.

DNA the genetic material of cell, is stabilised by hydrogen bonding. The complementary strands of DNA are held together by hydrogen bonding. Thus the DNA structure is maintained by hydrogen bonding between complementary base pairs. Though hydrogen bond are weaker than covalnet bond, large number of intra molecular hydrogen bonds between the base pairs provide stability to DNA strand. Thus maintaing the structure of DNA Hydrogen bonding help the maintanence of intact genetic material, also paly a role in replication. During DNA replication when helicase enzyme break the H-bond the DNA strands unwind and give rise to daughter strands (by action of enzymes such as DNA Pol).

Proteins are essential components of cell essentail for perfoeming biological functions. The secondary, tertiary and quarternary structure of protein are stabilised by hydrogen bonding. It provide rigidity to protein and specificity too. The folding of protein also regulated by hydrogen bonding thus influence its function too. Stability between subunits in a multimeric protein also provided by H-bonds.