This track connects a semester of mechanisms to biological molecules, showing pre-health students that biochemistry is just organic chemistry in context.

Carbohydrates are polyhydroxy aldehydes or ketones — the alcohol and carbonyl functional groups stacked on one molecule. Key concepts: classification as aldoses vs. ketoses and by carbon count; the abundance of stereocenters (D/L designation, and why n stereocenters give 2ⁿ stereoisomers — a payoff from the chirality unit); and, most importantly, cyclization. A sugar's own hydroxyl adds intramolecularly to its carbonyl — the hemiacetal formation from the carbonyl-addition track — to give a ring (pyranose/furanose). This creates a new stereocenter at the anomeric carbon, giving α and β anomers that interconvert through the open-chain form (mutarotation). Linking the anomeric carbon to another sugar's hydroxyl forms a glycosidic bond (an acetal, again from the carbonyl-addition track), building di- and polysaccharides.

"Sweet Chains"