CHEMICAL REACTIONS
A chemical
reaction is a change brought about by the formation or breaking of chemical
bonds. Two general types of reactions are synthesis reactions and
decom-position reactions.
In a synthesis reaction, bonds are formed to
join two or more atoms or molecules to make a new com-pound. The production of
the protein hemoglobin in potential red blood cells is an example of a
synthesis reaction. Proteins are synthesized by the bonding of many amino
acids, their smaller subunits. Synthesis reactions require energy for the
formation of bonds.
In a decomposition reaction, bonds are
broken, and a large molecule is changed to two or more smaller ones. One
example is the digestion of large molecules of starch into many smaller glucose
mole-cules. Some decomposition reactions release energy; this is described in a
later section on cell respiration.
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