 As I put in chat earlier, welcome to the Science Circle, if you're new. Welcome back, if you're not. I'm glad you decided to take your time this Saturday to visit us. And I love questions. So I'll be talking in voice. And I hope to see a lot of chat. You can ask questions. I'll try to answer them as we go. Or you can try to answer the questions yourself. I know we've got some people in the audience who are chemists or biochemists or physiologists. And I'm happy to see them and all of you. A little preamble here. It's now time to start. A little preamble is for nearly a decade in the 1970s, I was a research biochemist. When I was young, I felt that people were a mystery. But the world was understandable if you looked at it through science. So I became an avid learner of science back when I was very young in elementary school. And it fascinated me, for example, in early high school to find that leaves were not only green, but you could coax the colors out of them through chemistry. You could transform one thing into another and understand how things work, unlike understanding people even today. Biochemistry was also my first exposure to teaching. I took a chemistry class in 10th grade. My teacher then asked me to be his assistant in 11th. And then he said, how would you like to teach the organic chemistry section? So I taught organic chemistry in 11th. And I love teaching. And I've been teaching at university now for 22 years and at other places even earlier. So my original plan was to trot out some models of molecules like you see here and say, hey, aren't they grand? But I realized that the first thing I needed to do was provide some background and context so you might be able to feel the same thing about biochemistry as I have. And then I realized I haven't done biochemistry except for science fairs and stuff for like 40 years. And not as complex material as presented today. And I was also a plant pathologist, although I did do a little research at NASA in the exobiology division. So this presentation has probably taken me more time to prepare to almost any other one I've done, but it's been a labor of love. And so I'm happy to share it with you. And so I will get started with the presentation. Welcome. OK, here's what I'm going to share with you. And today, the first thing I'm going to do, like I said, is give a little bit of introduction, a little bit of background with physics and chemistry and biology and the senses and how we interpret external stimuli in our senses and then in our brain. And then I've got to talk a little bit about chemistry, mainly how matter interacts, the forces that interact with matter. And then quantum chemistry, the weird world of billions of meters or billions of times smaller than we live today. And then I'll get to the bio part, the how we perceive and use chemicals as well as the actual representative organic chemicals themselves. OK, so let's start with an introduction having to do with biochemistry. Biochemistry, as I've mentioned, is interdisciplinary science. You've got physics and chemistry and biology. And it's also about the role of the senses. If you think about it, without the senses, we would know nothing about the world around us. So let's take a look. The first thing about in physics is understanding waves. Now, waves, we have seen on the beach. In fact, I think we're mentioning it, the senses. OK, yes, it is too. And so you've got waves. Now, waves not only occur two-dimensionally, like you might see at a beach, but essentially they radiate out from objects that create waves. And then particles can also look like waves, essentially what are called density waves, much like sound. Essentially, the particles that are associated with sound are the molecules in the air, which then build up, much like cars on a freeway to create waves. You can have particles and waves. When you get into the very, very small, you'll see that things can be particles and waves at the same time. Now, as far as chemistry goes, essentially, yes, in this case, sound waves are. In other cases, they may be in other dimensions. Now, chemistry itself is essentially electromagnetic attraction. It's atoms, or particularly the electrons in atoms that are attracted to each other. And they tend to share electrons. So we talk a little bit about that. And then from the biological standpoint, we have a number of senses. We've got touching, and hearing, and sight, and our taste, our gussetary sense, and smell olfactory sense. So I'll be talking a little bit about those here coming up. OK, so let's now, all of this actually happens in the brain. In other words, the brain needs these senses in order to interact with the environment, in order to sense what's around us. This is the picture that was on the website, the several website. And it shows the different parts of the brain that are associated with smell. So it's rather complicated. OK, let's see. OK, so it's rather complicated. But essentially, our senses, as I mentioned, are how we experience the world. And then the brain is how we interpret what we sense. And essentially, for everyone that's different, based on their experiences and what they sense. So the world is really different to each of us. So let me talk a little bit then about background information that I need to about chemistry, particularly forces that act on matter. And then the quantum world, the very small world that's very different from ours that we're used to. OK, so in, there are four forces that act on matter. Inside the nucleus, there's the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. But it takes a lot of energy, about 100 times what you see in chemistry, to really interfere with that, although the weak nuclear force has to do with radioactivity. And then there's the electromagnetic force. Now, that's the one we're more familiar with, because essentially, it acts at distances and sizes that are the size of atoms and us and planets. Even planets, of course, have the electromagnetic force. That's why we've got magnetic field around the Earth. And Jupiter has a huge one and lots of them. So that's the one we're more familiar with. And that's essentially the only force that's at the atomic level, at least in the energies that there are for chemistry. And I will talk about energy, temperature, pressure, touch, all that good stuff like that, too. And magnetism. Now, that's a good point for a bergon that made, is that different animals and plants have senses that we may not have or have senses in different wavelengths and other things that we may not. So we may not be as attuned to magnetism as, say, birds, migrating birds or other animals are. Now, gravity, you've got to have a lot of atoms for gravity to make any difference. Now, if you and I were kind of floating out in their way beyond Pluto, where the New Horizons Telescope or New Horizons spacecraft is, then perhaps over a bit of time, we would then merge together due to gravity. But you really have to have either a lot of atoms or to have gravity be one of the stronger forces, because it's really the weakest force of any of them. So in the quantum world, it's very different from ours. And inside the atom, if you're not familiar with this or this is like a subject that you took a long time ago, just to review, you've got, if you think about the solar system and you think about the sun, OK, that's the nucleus. And it's almost the same distances inside the atom. And so you've got, but instead of just a single sun in the middle, you've got protons and you've got neutrons. And the protons actually are the ones that make it hydrogen or carbon or magnesium or whatever. And then there are generally the same amount of neutrons. But as you get larger atoms, you get more neutrons being added to the mix. And then you've got the electrons. If an atom is not, in other words, a neutral atom, the atoms that we normally are associated with will have an equal number of electrons to balance out the protons. But they're not in an orbital like you see over to the far right. That's actually, oh yeah, lots of, and isn't that wonderful that we still have lots of science to discover? I mean, if we knew everything, it'd be pretty boring. So the electrons do not orbit like you see over on the far right. That's about 100 years old out of date. They do have what's called orbitals, but the orbitals look very different. They're more what you see down there on the bottom. And they do have different energy levels where each of the orbitals you see can hold two electrons and no more, polyexclusion principle for you guys that are chemists. And but an atom is not a particle. It's not a wave. It's kind of in between. And so you can't just say it's there, but the shapes that you see down there on the bottom, those atomic orbitals are where you would probably find the electron about 95% of the time. In other words, statistically that's where you would find it. And that makes up how close they can get to atoms. Okay, so atomic interactions. If you were to smash atoms together, in other words, a lot more than energy than you would find in chemistry, then you could really break the nucleus and you'd end up with a different element or isotope. And so the periodic table, even though it was discovered many years ago, actually is very interesting. It basically shows which ones have the different orbitals. And if you look down there on the far right, you'll see that, for example, carbon has two electrons in what's called the two P orbitals and then two in the two S. And so the two S ones actually come up and one of them fills one of the two P's and then stays in the two S. So if you look at unpaired electrons, there's four of them. And what that means is that carbon would very badly like to bond or share electrons with four other atoms. If you look at N nitrogen, it needs three, O oxygen needs two, F fluorine needs one, and the ones on the far right are called noble gases because they don't, I don't know why they're called noble except that the fact that they don't interact with anyone. They're kind of loners or a social type. Okay. So now we get to the, by having learned or reviewed a tiny bit of the background of chemistry and quantum chemistry and physics and stuff in just a few minutes. Yeah, they don't associate with, although they actually, the heavier noble gases can have compounds which, but not under normal circumstances. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Xenon, hexafluoride, for example, which is what Cisigius wrote. Okay. So let's take a look then at the chemistry of life, how we sense our world. Returning to the periodic table, not all those chemistry, typically only the ones that are chemistry and the ones you see in front of me are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur. Every once in a while, you'll see chlorine or fluorine in there and hydrogen, of course, which they bond to if they don't bond anything else. And then you'll see some of the elements in the middle that have to do with enzymes and nutrients and such with chromium, magnesium, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc and then some ions, in other words, ones which, lawyers. Then over on the far left, you've got some basically elements that create salts like potassium and calcium, magnesium and sodium. Okay. So those are, so in other words, the idea is that you're only gonna see some of these, not all. In fact, let me for just a second, before I get into this, let me just introduce a couple of our guests here. Is that what you see here is you've got a little, what over here on the end, which is a little shy, the white one, that's hydrogen. And then you've got carbon and you've got oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and potassium. That's essentially the ones you'll see with the smaller ones over here being predominant in biochemistry. And we'll get to these other ones here in a second. So let me sit down again and we'll continue with our presentation. Okay, as I mentioned, there are atomic orbitals. And essentially what the importance of them is how close you, atoms can get to each other. And so essentially there's a guy named Van Der Waal and he discovered, well, this is the distance that atoms can get to each other. In other words, the closest approach to each other because of the electrons repelling each other, even though they wanna try to share it. And without going into too much detail, you can see the models down there. In other words, you generally will not see those orbital models, but you will see the ones that show the bonds. In this case, you've got two carbons and some hydrogens bonding together. And also shape is very, very important in biochemistry. So you've got, does anyone happen to know any chemistry that happened to know what compound this is? And then the ones on the far are basically what are called, it's filled, very good. Okay, great. We do have some winners out there for that. This is ethane, ethane is normally a gas that you find in natural gas. In fact, what actually happens in these orbitals is the one I'm standing behind here now is, oh, geologists, yeah, of course. I also have to know about that. Okay, so these, what the atoms wanna try to do is they wanna try to get close so they can share electrons, but they don't wanna get too close to each other if there's more than say two of them. So carbon, for example, forms a tetrahedral or a tetrahedron. I've actually got a tetrahedron here, which helps me to create this. So it's kind of like a pyramid, except for it's got a triangular base on it. That's how four carbons would, or any four of anything would bind with carbon. Now, the next one over here, does anyone happen to know this one? It's got a carbon with four hydrogen side. I'll bet you die, day, man. Hey, hey, hey, methane, okay. Yeah, and it's methane because it's got, it's CH4. Well, yep, one carbon. Now on the other hand, we've got the one next to it, which is, yeah, luckily I get to talk. Okay, so this is ethane here, which has two carbons and they're a bunch of hydrogens. Now how about the one down the end? It's got, it's like ethane except it's got a oxygen and a, aha, okay, we've got somebody, winner there, ethanol, which we normally call alcohol. There's lots of alcohols and it has to do with the oxygen and the hydrogen, but yep, ethyl alcohol is another way. Good, I'm glad I've got some chemists out here, but that's what we normally call alcohol. I forgot to press speak, sorry about that, I've been speaking here. Okay, so let's learn a little bit about biochemists. You can hear the, so can I. Okay, so let's hear a little bit about biochemical concepts is by the way, has anyone recognized the saying there on the top? I just thought I'd throw that in. That's from Star Trek, by the way. Okay, so in any case, my first teaching lesson was that line in the middle where it says alkanes, alkanes, alkenes, alkanes, that sort of thing. So you've got methane and ethane, propane, butane and octane like you have in gasoline. And then there's all kinds of other terms like for example, an organic acid, a live long and prosper. Okay, an aldehyde. And as I mentioned, geometry is really important. Yeah, yeah, methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane, hexane, heptane, octane, non-adecane, blah, blah, blah. Okay, but as I mentioned, the shape of molecules is, blah, blah, blah comes after non-adecane. Butane, yeah. Okay, so in any case, shape is really important. And when you've got a single bond like that, atoms can rotate around those bonds. And that becomes very, very critical until you have double bonds or triple bonds and then they're more rigid in shape. Now, the other thing about biochemistry as far as terms goes is there is both the building up, in other words, anabolism and the breaking down, catabolism, so when you, thank you, so when you eat something, essentially you're breaking down those molecules which some other organism has already built up. So you're extracting the energy. And this is one of the cycles that's very important to do that. This takes place in the aerobic reactions, in other words, where you've got oxygen and it occurs in the mitochondria which is associated with energy making. Let's see, one of the, oh, well, people do have mistakes there as far as what's what. You can go back to the periodic table as far as what's going on. They probably meant as far as the actual isotope, carbon 12, carbon 14, carbon 14 being the radioactive version. Okay, so essentially in this citric acid they use the energy from food that we get and to break it down and then extract that energy and store it in a molecule called ATP which we'll take a look at here in a minute. Yeah, the wiggly or rigid, exactly. Okay, so let's take a look then at the human senses. In other words, what I'm doing is giving kind of a background to the molecules themselves is in the human senses, you've got, if you'll think about it, you've got different distances and different senses. So you've got, for example, with sight, you can see as far as you're able to perceive or resolution. So essentially there's no distance to how far you can see in sight. You can see to the nearest galaxies for all of the intensive purposes. It's just that you may not be able to make out the individual stars like a telescope can. With touch though, as was mentioned earlier, you've got temperature, you've got pressure, but you have to be in contact with the object. So that's very close. Same thing with taste is you have to be in contact and you're basically sensing chemicals rather than temperature or pressure. With smell, here again it's at the distance of whatever the sensor threshold is, but you're sensing airborne chemicals. In other words, if they can't be airborne, then you can't smell, but they can't go into your nose. For hearing, back to waves, rather than light waves, you've got sound waves at the distance of sensor threshold. So when you hear, like when you watch those movies, of course, and they're talking about, and you see spaceships whooshing through space or blowing each other up and there's no sound in space. You can't have sound in space. You can have the light from the but not sound in space. That's just for Hollywood. Okay, so now it's time to meet the molecules. Okay, in the audience there, by the way, you will see about 25 of the biochemicals I'm going to be showing. Oh yeah, and actually I'll talk about the sense of balance. Now, when we call these senses, they're actually perhaps part of other senses. By the way, I'll also talk about the propionation. In other words, the sense of body part locations when I talk about the sense of touch, but good point. These are also senses which keep us fast. Okay, so in the audience, you will find posters that basically have the molecules I'll be talking about. And so you can go take a look at them in a little bit. Well, actually I wonder if they're going to do it out sense in a while, we don't use those much anymore. Yeah, we do, as a matter of fact, and we'll get to that in fact, coming up real quick. Now, what most people, and then of course, there's having common sense, which is not very common. So, and we'll talk about the ears in a second, but the first sense I want to talk about is taste. And this is basically where chemicals match the receptors in the taste buds. Yeah. Okay, so let's see, let's take a second to resin for me, but I've got to slide over here on the side. Okay, so essentially taste also requires smell and touch. We know during the pandemic here that the part of unusual symptom of COVID-19 is to lose your sense of touch and smell. And so a lot of people, if they lose their sense of smell, they'll find that food is rather tasteless or vice versa. By the way, the fact that, or the thing that, does everybody know that the tongue has different places to taste? Well, actually that's old science. New science is that there are about two to 5,000 taste buds. They have 50 to 100 taste cells each where we sense it. And so you've got the external simulation of whatever you put into your mouth and then the taste buds sensing it and then you've got electrical impulses going through the nerves to the brain where the brain then interprets what it is. In taste, you've got sweets and salt and sour and savory, which is one that was recognized fairly recently plus texture and temperature. And spicy is actually pain, by the way. It's not a separate taste. So let's take a look then at some of the chemicals that are associated with that. Is that resident for you guys? For some reason it's not resident for me, but I've got to slide over here on the left. Okay, just checking. So here's one that most people are associated with. Here again, this is one of the posters in the audience. Glucose. Why would we want to taste sweet? Yeah, sweet. Yeah, and actually I've got some coffee right here with a little bit of glucose or sucrose or something in it. And we detect sweet things because those are sources of energy. And essentially the reason why energy, absolutely energy sources. So now the reason why you've got a lot of oxygen hydrogens on here is that they can bond with hydrogen in water to form what's called a hydrogen bond. It's not a covalent bond like in chemistry, but it's a kind of a loose bond. But what it does is help sugars like this to dissolve in water very readily. And also you'll notice that there's a ring on top and a straight structure on the bottom. And essentially when they're in water, you've got them switching back and forth all the time. In other words, carbon like this, particularly with the oxygen and hydrogen, they'll form rings and then straight structures and they kind of alternate in between all the time. So now let's take a look at this. This is kind of interesting. It dissolves in tea, absolutely. So let's take a look at this. Now glucose is not just a sweet, but it's also a building block for other very important molecules. And so you've got starch over in the left and cellulose over the right. Now, what is the difference between those? If you actually look at it, there's very, very little difference. It's essentially a shape thing. But its shape is so important for enzymes to break these down, that essentially the one on the left, starch, we can digest. By the way, we don't taste starch. Starch is tasteless, but to some animals they can taste starch as another taste. But essentially the difference between the one on the left and the one on the right is profound enough that the one on the left we can digest, the one on the right we can't. So animals have little microorganisms in it that can digest cellulose like termites, that can digest cellulose and then they use the byproducts for nutrition. There are other sugars, in fact, there's lots of sugars. And here you've got fructose, which is mostly found in fruits. It's another six carbon. In fact, you can take a look there up at the upper left about fructose versus glucose as far as they're very close to each other. And they're called monosaccharides because essentially they're one sugar whereas sucrose over on the right is a disaccharide and then there's polysaccharides. And you'll notice on the right that you've got a six carbon sugar and a five carbon sugar with lots of oxygen. So these things all dissolve really well. Okay, there are also ones that can fool the body into thinking they're sweet. In other words, they interact with the taste buds. Just, yeah, fake sugar. Yeah, we do, as a matter of fact. And now as Synergy is mentioning, there are places, of course, this is broken down. And if you overwhelm those areas like the pancreas having to produce insulin, you can get a disease such as diabetes or you can damage the liver if you have too much sugar. So any one of these chemicals can be something that we absolutely need or things that can overwhelm our system, say alcohol. Alcohol gives you perhaps a nice feeling at the beginning and I'll tell you why here, Matt, when we get to that, when we get to how nerves and synapses work, but it also can overwhelm your system as well. I'll change that. Okay, so now one of the things about this is you'll notice that it's not just a ring. It's what's called the benzene ring and it has alternating single and double bonds. Take a look in the upper left. And what that does as far as electron orbits is that essentially it forms three rings. In other words, you've got the ring where the atoms are, but then you've got rings above and rings below with the electrons. And essentially that keeps it rigid and also less easy to attack. So you've got this little structure that then can combine with a lot of stuff. And here you've got saccharin. You'll notice this yellow sulfur, atom, and then aspartame. Okay, going on to the bitter taste. Here's oxalic acid and citric acid. And you'll notice that they're very similar. Just one of them has a couple of carbons. In other words, basically two acid parts and the other one has three. And oxalic acid is found in speaking of veggies. Some of the veggies I like, where you've got spinach and rhubarb. Those are two places where you've got the oxalic acid. And then citric acid is, of course, where you find citric fruit. In other words, citric acid is in citric fruit and it contains a lot of it, particularly lemons and grapefruits. And taglines give us some very good medical information about cirrhosis and hepatic carcinomas. Fatty liver and such. Okay, now, we go from sweet to bitter to now spicy. Okay, these molecules here, you'll notice that they have, in one case, a couple of chains, another case of long tails, which we're gonna see in other molecules. And the one on the upper left there is peppering. And as it sounds, it's yay, red pepper, absolute. Now remember that basically spicy is a pain. In other words, your body senses is pain, not as a taste. But peppering is what gives pepper its bite and then you've got the capsicum down there, if that's how you pronounce it. Yeah, don't even think about those. Okay, which the pungent odor and stuff of chili peppers. Moving on to the tangy taste, you've got, now formic acid is not something you probably will taste, except it's the one that if you get stung by an ant or if you brush your skin against nettles, that's what you're gonna feel, it's the sting to, and it's the one to the far left, a very simple one. And it's the one that gives us that sensation. Pineapples also, yeah, you'll see those here in a minute, I think. Okay, then now, acetic acid is essentially vinegar. And when we say vinegar, normally it's a 10% acetic acid, and it's created, and you'll also, if you leave your wine out overnight, that's being eventful, it will then taste more like vinegar, which that's not a coincidence. Okay, it's also used in sourdough bread and other stuff like that. Yeah, oxidized, okay, not a concept. Okay, and then lactic acid is what, some people are lactose intolerant and other people can drink milk without side effects, it's a genetic thing, just within a few thousand years ago, or so, and so it's essentially a half of a glucose molecule, if you look at it. And it's very common, it produces the sting in muscles when you exercise, when they're deprived of oxygen and bacteria in the milk, breaks down milk sugar, and then that causes milk to coalesce, in other words, the proteins and such to coalesce, that's what you've got spoiled milk, and also fermented vegetables, yogurt and fermented vegetables basically use a controlled version of that. Yeah, but hey, they're pretty popular. They're pretty popular. Now, as far as fat goes, speaking of not wanting too much when you're older, you've got the straight chain acids, that's what, when they say saturate, sweethearts, yep, I do. When you say saturated fat, what you're talking about is carbons that have long chains like the one on the bottom that have as many hydrogen as possible. The unsaturated fats are the ones which have as many double bonds as possible. And what those do is change the shape of them. So you have on the bottom left, for example, a leic acid, which is found in olives. Here again, olives are good unsaturated, sources of saturated fat. And then the other white meats, so to speak, pork and lamb and poultry and such. And also, cocoa butter, by the way, is very uniform. So, and it has some unsaturated fat, so essentially it will melt just below body temperature, 34 Celsius rather than 37 Celsius. So that's why chocolate, when you touch it, will melt almost completely. Yeah, that's a tip. Some of these, the body doesn't see it as a caterpillar, but I thought some of these things were pretty cool. Now margarine, okay, now that's an interesting point, Shaila, because on the linoleic acid over there, which by the way, human milk has a lot of linoleic acid, but essentially when you're doing margarine, what they do is they stop. In other words, the fat at top would be a solid. And then vegetables, which are very polyunsaturated, would be a liquid. But with margarine and stuff, they kind of stop it in the middle, so that it's soft, but it's not either a full solid or a liquid. And then smoky taste, when you break down meat, if you like barbecue, when you break down meat, you get these little things. Yeah, a lot of these, what do they call it? Necessities of mother of invention. Same thing with synthetic rubber. And other things where they needed those and they had to advance spam. Yeah, that too, spam, spam, spam. Okay, so yeah, okay, so in any case, formaldehyde, for example, is used to preserve biological samples, but it's also a bactericide. Butyric acid, cow milk, part of the taste of it that gives it a taste is butyric acid, enhances its flavors, but also the one at top, for example, is called acoline, which essentially that's why smoke is accurate to your eyes, like barbecue smoke. Okay, let's take a look then at the sense of smell. We've taken a look at taste. Well, hopefully so because that means you're kind of getting into the, getting into this, you're possessing part of this. Okay, so let's take a look then at smell, which essentially is what happens with smell is you've got these little sensors that are at the top of your nose and you have to have airborne chemicals coming in. And then, by the way, did you know that they found that humans can smell as well as, they may not have as many sensors, but they can smell as well as dogs or other animals. In fact, they figured that they can smell about one trillion differences. Yeah, like a perfumer. They humans, we us can smell well as other animals. Yeah, that's kind of a new one. Now, of course, yeah, dogs smell better than humans. Okay, well, we're not talking about that. However, we will be talking about some of the ones that are sweat, for example. Okay, so any case in hearing, excuse me, hearing, where are we, we're smelling. Okay, so in smelling, you've got these neurons and you've got these receptors, there's always 400 of them in the nose and they essentially pick up the different smells that match the different sensors in there and then that transmits an electrical pulse there to the mitral cells and then the neurons go to the brain and all of that good stuff like that, freshly washed puppy, okay. Which the interesting thing is, when we talk about the brain, we'll talk about memories. In other words, when you think of something that smells or tastes, you actually bring back memories. That's part of the senses and interpretation. Okay, here's a couple of smells for you. You've got a benzaldehyde, which is cherries and almonds. The problem with cherries and almonds is that you don't wanna break up the pit though, the little thing that's inside the pit is that's full of hydrogen cyanate. You can have bad problems breaking up the pits of cherries and almonds and other fruit like that. Ionone is a smell of cedar or new moon hay, very nice. Yep, there you go, right there. Okay, so tagline has, or Dr. Hendricks has mentioned how that actually works with the pathways of the hippocampus performing memories. But Ionone is also kind of a very weak solution of it is found, it smells a bit like violet, so it's used in expensive perfumes. Okay, let's take, moving on here, we've got some unpronounceable ones, except for the camis, you know, mevel 2 pyridil ketone and 2 heptadone and isolamyl acetate. But essentially what you've got over on the far right is you've got, well, yeah, you can take a look at that, you've got the smell of bananas, the smell of apples, the smell of popcorn there on the left, bottom left, the smell of clothes and blue cheese and such. So even these tiny little molecules, oh really, okay. Even these tiny little molecules, cut plants, yeah, I know, but you gotta eat something, Zizigie. I mean, you could be, so yeah, I think about that sometimes with the plants too. Yes, well, the interesting thing about esters by the way, since I don't quite have time to get it into esters, esters are simply a combination of two chemicals. And there was a time long ago where they tried to do that with a computer. In other words, essentially you could buy this thing and then as you perhaps went to a webpage where there'd be a pine tree or a banana, it would then get a little signal and mix the two chemicals and you'd smell a pine tree or you'd smell a banana. Now, the fact that we don't have these on our computers means it didn't get very far. Yep, there you go. That's an alcohol there for Max who's the biochemist in our groups, scratch and sniff also, same thing. Oh, and we will get to garlic there, Cass. So hang on a second. We're coming up on that. And so for now, you've got smells of, up on top there smells of peanuts or rum or whiskey or whoops. And I think I went too far. There we go. Okay. Down on the bottom, again, benzylac acetate and related to hyacinth. So this is used in perfume too and you've got chocolate, peppers, some vegetables and stuff, the one there on the top. That's another very interesting topic about how insects and bees and stuff like that sense, including sensing in wavelengths that we can't sense. Okay, up on the top, another, some more things. Oil of peppermint, which is pretty much synthetic now but if you do the mirror image, remember I was saying that shape has a big part to play in this. If you were to kind of turn that inside out, so to speak, mirror image, you would get a smell of caraway seeds rather than a spearmint. And down on the bottom, just as the name suggests, you've got, I'm not sure about coming in. Okay, is cinnamon. Okay, here's some not, here's some good ones and then we're getting into some not so good ones. The one on the top there, the smell of coffee. Okay, for people that like coffee. And there's garlic for you. Dileyl disulfide, which is kind of an interesting looking one. Looks like kind of a spaceship down the far right. And then the, yep, okay. And then you've got the one that propane-thyl disulfoxide then that gives you the lacrimatory, the tearing in onions. Okay, a couple other fun ones up here, eugenol and vanilla. And essentially vanilla can be synthesized from eugenol by oxidizing it up at the top. Eugenol, for example, is the smell of Baileys and cloves. Yeah, and we're gonna get to a couple of sulfur things here in a minute, but sulfur does lend itself in both proteins. Yeah, that too, eggs, when you break these down. Now you're talking about some of the sulfur gases, rotten eggs, yeah. Okay, but the one on top there, Baileys, cloves, nutmeg, and citronella, like you would have found there's a Japanese plant and then there's also geraniums, which are a bit more common, could have it. Here's pine. You've got pineene, the smell of pine oil and Jupiter, which juniper, Jupiter, which is also a natural bactericide. So, and a lot of times we associated with kind of a clean smell. It's in a lot of cleaning agents because it is a bactericide. You'll also notice the odd-looking shape. It's not kind of flat like some of the other shapes. The hydrogen sulfide there is tagline mentioned. And you've got camphor, which is then a version of pineene. Now, one thing about camphor is it actually, physiologically, it promotes deep breathing. I remember as a kid, they had, let's see, what was the product? It was Vix vapor rub or whatever. And you've got, it promotes deep breathing, raises blood pressure, which, but you have to be careful of it because it will also, in large doses, produce convulsions and respiratory failure. Most of these ones, you have to be careful. Vix, yes, not Vix, Vix. Okay, and then you've got these ones, which are smells. The one on top, skunks, ferrets, minks, urea, which is found in urine, which breaks down into ammonia. And the one on the bottom is one you probably do not wanna smell, which is called putrescene. And then there's another one that's related to it called cadaverine, which you can then imagine what does smell like. Now, the interesting thing with these is that nylon basically looks similar to this, except you can't smell nylon because it can't reach your nose. It's a big polypeptide. Or I mean, not polypeptide, big poly, whatever, long molecule thing. Yeah, cadaverine is actually a real thing. Okay, so now the one on top there is a leafy with pleasant smells. Essentially, you've got chocolate up at the top. And then the actual, and then as we'll be talking about the brain here coming up, is essentially theobromine is the stimulant in chocolate, which only differs from caffeine, as you'll see it, theobromine on the left, caffeine on the right, simply by a couple of connections there. So they're very closely related. Smells like victory, chocolate in the morning. For me, actually the coffee I'm drinking right now has a little chocolate in it, yay. Okay, so now take a look at site. Okay, site. We certainly don't have time, some of these get very complicated. We don't have a huge amount of time to talk about all the details of site. But essentially like anything else, you've got an internal stimulant, which is the light waves coming in. And then what vision is, is essentially you've got both mechanical and chemical going on. The cornea focuses the light on the back of the eye. The back of the eye has about 120 million rods and about six million cones. The rods are essentially they detect objects or light in very low light conditions and in your peripheral vision, whereas the cones are divided into short, medium, long or red, let's say red, green, blue, like for computers. And so when that color, like you see up on the very top, when that color and these are connected to proteins called opsins and when that light comes in there, what it does is what happens is on the next slide here. Let's take a look, okay. So on the next slide you'll see up at the very top, first of all a natural substance called keratin. And then essentially, which are found in carrots. And this one works with the keratin, for example, works with chlorophyll also to keep it protected from oxygen and also to pick up some wavelengths for plants. By the way, okay. Well, we're not gonna, we'll get to chlorophyll just in a second, but retinol is the chemical that's associated with site. Essentially what happens is you've got the cis version there in the middle and when the light wave of the correct wavelength, in other words, energy comes in, it turns it from cis to trans, which that then signals the presence of that color light. I think it's absolutely fascinating that we, that the eye can do this sort of thing. In other words, it's over a long period of evolution and such, but even primitive animals have a version of it like rods that can detect the presence of light or chemicals that can detect the presence of light. Okay. And then speaking of, although these are speaking of site, what makes things look the color they are? Well, up at the very top, part of it has to do with the chemicals, in other words, that are on the surface of them. And then part of it has to do with pH. So for example, at the very top, you've got a chemical that could look either blue or red, depending on the pH. So for, so depending on the pH of the soil, for example, or inside the fruit or plant, that could look like a blackberry or it could look like a strawberry. It could look like apple skins or cherries. It could look like a blue corn flower or it could look like a red poppy up at the top, depending on the pH. Down on the bottom is the color of humans. And not only the color of humans, but also octopi and chameleons. Now humans can't do this, but in octopi and chameleons, what they can do is take melanin and actually move it through channels of their skin. And so they can become different colors. Yeah, these are the pigments. Melon and of course with humans and well, yeah, that too. Okay, but the idea is, I think it would be kind of cool to be able to be whatever color you want. In other words, like an octopus or a chameleon or whatever. Maybe like a mood ring, anybody remember those? That'd be funny. Whatever mood you're in that you change color. Yeah, that would be, I think that'd be most cool. And we finally got, we've got touch and then we're gonna get down to the brain. And so I'm watching my time here a little bit. And so for touch, here again, some of these get very complicated. Well, up to the brain, but in other words, the brain is then the center of everything, but all of these kind of go back to it. But the further you move toward it, the more complicated the subject becomes and the less familiar some people are with it perhaps. Okay, so for touch, you've got essentially, again, a stimulus, sensors, and then internal interpretation in the brain. And touch is actually the first sense that babies develop. And then there's several receptors based on what you have. Down to the bottom. So really remember, talked about propionation, whether or what are called proprioceptors, which basically say where things are in your body in comparison to each other. That's kind of cool. And then you've got pain receptors, you've got thermal receptors for temperature and mechanoreceptors for light touches and hard touches and such like that. Very fascinating stuff. Now, this is the part that I'm less familiar with. So if I say the wrong thing, let me know. But the way the synapses work, that's what a synapse is, is it's the joint essentially between two neurons. And they're not touching because you wanna be able to control it, not just a wire, but you wanna be able to control it like a switch. And so in touch, a synapse is kind of like a spark plug. And so a stimulus will cause a calcium iron to move there that builds up voltage. So it's both chemical and electrical. And basically it builds up voltage in the cleft, triggering different neurotransmitters to bridge the gap and then basically fire the connection. Yeah, thanks, the lightning bolt. Okay, and then various neurotransmitters can act as either on or off signals. Now what ethanol does, I told you I'd get the ethanol, is it essentially acts with the gamma-amino-butanoic acid in another part of the protein on the bottom part of the synapse there. And it then essentially opens the channel and prevents communication, which is interesting. So people think of it as a stimulant, but it's actually a depressant or a general anesthetic on the brain. Now there are also neurotransmitters. Yeah, numbness of pain. I also tend to think it kind of focuses the brain, instead of thinking about all the stuff that you shouldn't be thinking about anyway. Okay, so neurotransmitters, they're both on and off. There's glutamate, which is on, glycine, which is off, in other words, glutamate is the principle of the one that turns on a neuron communication. Yeah, I thought so too. Well, no, it's an on-off switch, that's the purpose. In other words, if it were just a wire connecting and they were all connecting to each other, you couldn't turn them on and off. And so you've got these things that can turn them on and off. At least that's my understanding. Now dopamine down the bottom, I read a very interesting article. Okay, everybody listen up. How many nerds out there or people that love learning? Anybody? Everybody. Yeah, of course. Yeah, okay, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the idea is, yeah, that's why we're on second life. Okay, so, and me, me, me, me, me. Yes, okay, so now, what I read is that when you think of dopamine, some of the earlier experiments basically said they had to do with the basic appetites. In other words, you got dopamine and it was really good. You feel good because you ate or you exercised or had sex or something, but that's not really what it is. What they found is that it has to do with rewards. There's about four different pathways. Some of them go to autonomic nervous system, some central nervous system, but it also goes to the part of the brain that's right before the frontal cortex. And so what you have is that the joy of learning, of discovery, of finding things can be just as pleasurable to you as any other activity. And so for nerds, they get this dopamine rush when they are learning something new. Isn't that cool? I read an article on that during research for this presentation that that was really cool. Yeah, as Bergon mentions there, or man. Let's see, okay, doki. So now we talked about glutamate and glycine, and I'm gonna go over probably by, for you guys that are counting here, probably about about 10 or 15 minutes. I apologize, this is a big subject. And I try to keep it within an hour, but I'll go over just a tiny bit. Okay, so yeah, and I did too, frankly, about agreeing with the nerd dopamine part. Okay, so amino acids, so they're talking about glycine and glutamic acid. Amino acids are very important for the enabolism part of biochemistry. In other words, when you're building up proteins, humans need about 20 amino acids, which we normally get from either meats or from combinations of vegetables. Corn and beans, for example, is one of the ones in the Americas, but I'm sure you guys can probably write in chat there, lots of different combinations of things that are found in the Middle East, that are found in Asia, that are combinations of vegetables where you get all of the grains and vegetables, in other words, where you get all of the amino acids that you need. And vegetarians know this really well, rice and beans. That's another one, where you get all the amino acids. So glycine is one of the neurotransmitters, as I mentioned, glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter, but monosodium glutamate, for example, becomes a flavor enhancer. It's when you take one of the hydrogens and you put it as a salt with the acid group. And then cysteine down on the bottom enhances and then down at the very bottom and watch a tagline saying, because he'll talk more about the details of this and how it works in the body, which is far beyond what I know of the subject. I'm more of the biochemist, not the bio part. Yeah, example, example, what Syzygy said. Okay, so down on the bottom, cysteine is one of the amino acids along with methionine, the bridges protein chains. So proteins are long chains, but if you wanna actually bind them, you'll usually see cysteine or one of those together. That in other words, it helps it to create the 3D structure of proteins. Okay, here, as I mentioned, ATP. This is formed in, yep, energy. And but, look at what it's made of. This is cool. Is ATP basically as adenine? Now anyone know where adenine comes from? I'll show you in a minute. And then you've got a sugar, which is ribose, and then you've got this triphosphate group up there, which contains an enormous amount of energy that you could take away. And so ATP is what is the energy that you find in muscles that make that work. Okay, now, where do you find adenine? Well, it's one of the four bases for DNA. And so you've got basically, if you look on the far right, upper right, you'll see that there's a sugar, ribose, connected to a phosphate group, connected to one of the four base pairs. Now, these base pairs only form in different ways. In other words, adenine only forms of thymine, cytosine only forms of guanine, purines, pyrimidines. One of the reasons why I like this is this is the area where I did the research at NASA was prebiological formation of primitines. In other words, how did primitines form in prebiological days as part of the exobiology division at NASA, which was really cool. Okay, at least to me, okay. Now let's take a look then, having looked at the other senses, let's take a look quickly at hearing and then the brain. And so for hearing, there's not a lot of chemicals associated with this until you get into the actual transmission to the nurse. Okay, and so in the sense of hearing what actually happens is that you've got sound waves that impinge on essentially a drum, that's the eardrum. And then those little drums set up, there's three of the smallest bones in your body, which two of them are commonly called the anvil and the steric, these little ossicles. And they transmit this vibration into an area called the cochlea. And then there's also, people were talking about sense of balance. If you look at it, there's a gyroscope in there. Up at the teeny little tendering bins. Okay, so there's a gyroscope up there. And if you look at that purple structure there, you'll see basically it's an X, Y and Z coordinates and it's filled with liquid. So that's what when you move, yeah, that's exactly what happens in vertigo, absolutely. And particularly with the estation tube there, if you get that plugged up, you're gonna have some vertigo, I get that. In other words, if I get it cold or get stopped up or whatever like that, I definitely get this vertigo and it happens to do with those things getting out of whack. Okay, and then that cochlea thing, there's this place called the organ of Corti, which basically is where it's got little hairs and the little hairs and skydiving, exactly lots of stuff. Okay, so basically you've got these little hairs and the hairs are tuned to different frequencies. So as the range has come along, you've got this big loud band and boom, boom, boom, boom and you can actually break off some of those hairs and lose that hearing in that ranges. Also as you get old, unfortunately, same sort of thing. So that's kind of how hearing works. Now, when we get to the nerve parts here, we're at the brain, we're there, we're almost at the end. Let's take a look then at the, yeah, they can, unfortunately, and that's what happens to me also, okay. So in any case, with the brain, our sense of consciousness, essentially, I mean, what is our sense of consciousness, being conscious of the outside environment, even though the brain is very happy when you're asleep and is doing all kinds of neat stuff and clearing your head. And by the way, they found out that deep sleep helps a lot with the chemical flushing out of things and prevents Alzheimer's and stuff or at least helps to prevent the buildup of those plaques and stuff for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and stuff. And so the brain has, it's very fascinating, the brain has about a hundred billion, sounds like Carl's saying billions, of these neuron cells that have these kind of tendrils like an octopus that go out and reach out to other places. And we've talked a little bit about that with the touching part, but they kind of act like little wires and then there's this specialized glial cells. And one of them, the aster glial thing then connects, you can see on the diagram there through the far right, how it connects to the blood vessels. And then you've got other ones which insulate the, yeah, I like that. Okay, other ones that insulate the neurons when they're doing these electrical activity. And then you've got these little micro phages. Yeah, I like the word too, that glial is kind of a fun word. But these micro glial ones that act as like little phages that help protect them from invaders like bacteria or viruses. Cause, brilliant, yes. I remember that the, okay, the walrus and the carpenter? Which one was that? Okay, so any case, and then the cells that line the spinal cells or spinal column. Okay, moving on, we're almost there. Okay, I got like four left. Okay, if you guys that are championed a bit. Okay, so now when you're talking about the brain, there are chemicals that can really do, yeah, there's some chemicals that can really do some interesting things to the brain. Some of them can basically interfere with neurotransmitters, such as acetylsalic acid or aspirin, which basically can both interfere synthesis of neurotransmitters as well as dilate the blood, which then can cause headaches or migraines for some people. And then tetrahydrocannabinol or THC alters the hippocampus as Tagline mentioned earlier. Okay, yeah, versus L, okay. And then forming memories and balance and reaction time. And then morphine essentially acts on the central nervousness to block sites in the nerve cells, much like some of the other neurotransmitters that I mentioned. That's a very good point. You know, Shaila, there's just, hey, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna put you on the spot and say, why don't you come back and talk about that? The idea though is there's a huge bunch of research on this and it's so exciting these last couple of decades that where they found connections and such like that, we're totally connected. And then the whole thing about the gut itself and the fauna down there is amazing and how it can do stuff, okay, whatever. Okay, so now I'm gonna leave you with a couple of interesting things. One is the relationship here between cholesterol and estradiol and testosterone. And so you've got cholesterol on the left. Now cholesterol normally gets a bad rap, but it really is an essential steroid that's found in creation of cell membranes and hormones. And it's just when you got too much of it built up into blood and it starts sticking and creates little plaques that you have a problem. But notice how nearly the same it is with estradiol and testosterone. Now the body, even though those chemicals are very, very close to each other, you've got estradiol, which is the female hormone that basically creates a female. And then you've got not only, sorry, that's pretty basically there, but then also testosterone, which is a shortened version of cholesterol, which then regulates the male characteristics of humans. But it's so interesting that just some of these single molecules, these hormones can do such different things in human beings. Okay, here's another one that's very similar. And this is one I remember from long ago, back going, oh my goodness. If you look on the left, you've got chlorophyll, which then has a tail because it absorbs light like in the retinol in the eyes. And it basically absorbs violet and red light. I remember back in my first botany class learning that plants really like red light and they'll grow faster with red light than with regular light. So it appears green because it absorbs us. I think it's also a very strong absorber. So chlorophyll has to break down before you see the other colors in the molecule. Now notice on the right, you've got heme, which is a human one for your blood. And when you put it together as heme and globin, it's red because of the iron rather than the magnesium. And so what I find is absolutely amazing that if you look at those two molecules, what in plants, what in humans, they're almost identical. They're very, very close to each other except for the iron and the magnesium. I'm gonna leave you with one other slide here. And this has nothing to do with biochemistry necessarily except what's on the left and what's on the right. This is my last slide because I was reading an article about this. Yeah, now which one? The one on the left, well, actually the brain's on the left. That's a picture of the brain been lit up with different dyes and stuff, but that's the neuron to the brain. Yeah, I know, and I'm done here just, I'm absolutely done right now. Okay, so any case, and come back and take a look at some of the stuff, but on the right, happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate Thanksgiving and give thanks for people that don't. Okay, and now the ones on the right is a depiction. Well, actually that's kind of the large scale version of the universe. That's a depiction of it. And that's essentially the way it would look if you were like way billions of light years out there looking at billions of light years. In other words, the galaxies you couldn't even see basically there'd be tiny little dots on there. And so there's a great article that just came out and I'm just back down with it 30 seconds is the one on the left is the brain, the one on the right is the universe and the scale of it and the structure of it, they were noting just how similar they were. And I think I will leave you at that and I hope you enjoyed the presentation today and take a look around at the molecules there around. Thank you. Fast and furious to be sure. And yes, I noticed that Shailo mentioned, thank you, Shantel, for sponsoring these talks since for the last 12 years. It's amazing how many people we've reached with this in the education and such, so give a shout out.