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Example of an unsaturated fat triglyceride (C 55 H 98 O 6).Left part: glycerol; right part, from top to bottom: palmitic acid, oleic acid, alpha-linolenic acid. A triglyceride (from tri-and glyceride; also TG, triacylglycerol, TAG, or triacylglyceride) is an ester derived from glycerol and three fatty acids. [1]
[21] [22] They are made of a hydrocarbon chain that terminates with a carboxylic acid group; this arrangement confers the molecule with a polar, hydrophilic end, and a nonpolar, hydrophobic end that is insoluble in water. The fatty acid structure is one of the most fundamental categories of biological lipids and is commonly used as a building ...
Neutral fats, also known as true fats, are simple lipids that are produced by the dehydration synthesis of one or more fatty acids with an alcohol like glycerol. Neutral fats are also known as triacylglycerols, [ 1 ] these lipids are dense as well as hydrophobic due to their long carbon chain and are there main function is to store energy.
The molecule of a triglyceride can be described as resulting from a condensation reaction (specifically, esterification) between each of glycerol's –OH groups and the HO– part of the carboxyl group HO(O=)C− of each fatty acid, forming an ester bridge −O−(O=)C− with elimination of a water molecule H 2 O.
Glycerol has three hydroxyl functional groups, which can be esterified with one, two, or three fatty acids to form mono-, di-, and triglycerides. [2] These structures vary in their fatty acid alkyl groups as they can contain different carbon numbers, different degrees of unsaturation, and different configurations and positions of olefins.
Lipids are amphiphilic: they have one end that is soluble in water ('polar') and an ending that is soluble in fat ('nonpolar'). By forming a double layer with the polar ends pointing outwards and the nonpolar ends pointing inwards membrane lipids can form a 'lipid bilayer' which keeps the watery interior of the cell separate from the watery ...
Lipids are usually made from one molecule of glycerol combined with other molecules. In triglycerides , the main group of bulk lipids, there is one molecule of glycerol and three fatty acids . Fatty acids are considered the monomer in that case, and may be saturated (no double bonds in the carbon chain) or unsaturated (one or more double bonds ...
Fatty acids are produced in the cytoplasm of cells by repeatedly adding two-carbon units to acetyl-CoA. Triacylglycerol synthesis, on the other hand, occurs in the endoplasmic reticulum membrane of cells by bonding three fatty acid molecules to a glycerol molecule.