"design that resembles a football, or soccer ball. In 1996 the trio was awarded the Nobel Prize for their pioneering efforts. The C60 molecule was named buckminsterfullerene (or, more simply, the buckyball) after the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome is constructed on the same structural principles. Organic compounds containing bonds of carbon to nitrogen, oxygen and the halogens are not normally grouped separately. Others are sometimes put into major groups within organic chemistry and discussed under titles such as organosulfur chemistry, organometallic chemistry, organophosphorus chemistry and organosilicon chemistry. Organic reactions are chemical reactions involving organic compounds. Many"
"only help ensure that the oceans do not stagnate, but also play a critical role in Earth's dynamic climate. It is generally assumed that any extraterrestrial life that might exist will be based on the same fundamental biochemistry as found on Earth, as the four elements most vital for life, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, are also the most common chemically reactive elements in the universe. Indeed, simple biogenic compounds, such as very simple amino acids such as glycine, have been found in meteorites and in the interstellar medium. These four elements together comprise over 96% of Earth's collective biomass."
"by Lavoisier are: light, caloric, oxygen, azote (nitrogen), hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorous (phosphorus), charcoal, muriatic radical (chloride), fluoric radical (fluoride), boracic radical, antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cobalt, copper, gold, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdena (molybdenite), nickel, platina (platinum), silver, tin, tungstein (tungsten), zinc, lime, magnesia (magnesium), barytes (baryte), argill (clay or earth of alum), and silex. Traité Élémentaire de Chimie Traité élémentaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry) is a textbook written by Antoine Lavoisier published in 1789 and translated into English by Robert Kerr in 1790 under the title Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order containing All the Modern"
"component of nucleic acids, amino acids and thus proteins, and the energy-carrying molecule adenosine triphosphate and is thus vital to all life on Earth. Nitrogen is the most common pure element in the earth, making up 78.1% of the entire volume of the atmosphere. Despite this, it is not very abundant in Earth's crust, making up only 19 parts per million of this, on par with niobium, gallium, and lithium. The only important nitrogen minerals are nitre (potassium nitrate, saltpetre) and sodanitre (sodium nitrate, Chilean saltpetre). However, these have not been an important source of nitrates since the 1920s, when"
"to materials in the biosphere. The Periodic Table of the Elements encompass the 88 naturally occurring elements from arsenic to xenon. Yet despite this diversity of options, the biosphere relies on four elements—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON)—as the foundation of every living thing on earth. Adding trace amounts of sulfur, phosphorus and calcium we can account for the weight of 99 percent of every living thing on the planet. Parsimony in the biosphere makes it possible break down an organism like a rabbit locally and reassemble its constituent materials into a tree, mushroom or even another rabbit. The functional"
"the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The four lightest chalcogens (oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium) are all primordial elements on Earth. Sulfur and oxygen occur as constituent copper ores and selenium and tellurium occur in small traces in such ores. Polonium forms naturally after the decay of other elements, even though it is not primordial. Livermorium does not occur naturally at all. Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere by weight, 89% of water by weight, 46% of the earth's crust by weight, and 65% of the human body. Oxygen also occurs in many minerals, being found in all oxide minerals"
"fats, and aromatic esters, carotenoids and terpenes. With nitrogen it forms alkaloids, and with the addition of sulfur also it forms antibiotics, amino acids, and rubber products. With the addition of phosphorus to these other elements, it forms DNA and RNA, the chemical-code carriers of life, and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the most important energy-transfer molecule in all living cells. Nitrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 7, the symbol N and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere. The element"
"in all living organisms, and the nitrogen cycle describes movement of the element from air into the biosphere and organic compounds, then back into the atmosphere. Synthetically produced nitrates are key ingredients of industrial fertilizers, and also key pollutants in causing the eutrophication of water systems. Nitrogen is a constituent element of amino acids and thus of proteins, and of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). It resides in the chemical structure of almost all neurotransmitters, and is a defining component of alkaloids, biological molecules produced by many organisms. Oxygen is the chemical element with atomic number 8, occurring mostly as"
"organosulfur compounds. Hydrogen sulfide gives the characteristic odor to rotting eggs and other biological processes. Sulfur is an essential element for all life, but almost always in the form of organosulfur compounds or metal sulfides. Three amino acids (cysteine, cystine, and methionine) and two vitamins (biotin and thiamine) are organosulfur compounds. Many cofactors also contain sulfur including glutathione and thioredoxin and iron–sulfur proteins. Disulfides, S–S bonds, confer mechanical strength and insolubility of the protein keratin, found in outer skin, hair, and feathers. Sulfur is one of the core chemical elements needed for biochemical functioning and is an elemental macronutrient for"
"of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon, such as methane, ethane or propane. About 29 chemical elements play an active positive role in living organisms on Earth. About 95% of living matter is built upon only six elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. These six elements form the basic building blocks of virtually all life on Earth, whereas most of the remaining elements are found only in trace amounts. The unique characteristics of carbon make it unlikely that it could be replaced, even on another planet, to generate the biochemistry necessary for life. The carbon atom has"
"pH, ions, water, and atmospheric gases. Six major elements (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus; H, C, N, O, S, and P) form the constitution of all biological macromolecules and feed into the Earth's geochemical processes. From the smallest scale of biology, the combined effect of billions upon billions of ecological processes amplify and ultimately regulate the biogeochemical cycles of the Earth. Understanding the relations and cycles mediated between these elements and their ecological pathways has significant bearing toward understanding global biogeochemistry. The ecology of global carbon budgets gives one example of the linkage between biodiversity and biogeochemistry. It"
"alcohols (R-OH); ethers (R-O-R); ketones (R-CO-R); aldehydes (R-CO-H); carboxylic acids (R-COOH); esters (R-COO-R); acid anhydrides (R-CO-O-CO-R); and amides (). There are many important organic solvents that contain oxygen, including: acetone, methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, furan, THF, diethyl ether, dioxane, ethyl acetate, DMF, DMSO, acetic acid, and formic acid. Acetone () and phenol () are used as feeder materials in the synthesis of many different substances. Other important organic compounds that contain oxygen are: glycerol, formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, citric acid, acetic anhydride, and acetamide. Epoxides are ethers in which the oxygen atom is part of a ring of three atoms. The element is"
"contains more oxygen by mass than any other element, but more hydrogen by atom-fraction than any element. The elements listed below as ""Essential in humans"" are those listed by the (US) Food and Drug Administration as essential nutrients, as well as six additional elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen (the fundamental building blocks of life on Earth), sulfur (essential to all cells) and cobalt (a necessary component of vitamin B). Elements listed as ""Possibly"" or ""Probably"" essential are those cited by the National Research Council (United States) as beneficial to human health and possibly or probably essential. <nowiki>*</nowiki>Iron = ~3"
"the symmetric, square configuration. Aromatic compounds play key roles in the biochemistry of all living things. The four aromatic amino acids histidine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, and tyrosine each serve as one of the 20 basic building-blocks of proteins. Further, all 5 nucleotides (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil) that make up the sequence of the genetic code in DNA and RNA are aromatic purines or pyrimidines. The molecule heme contains an aromatic system with 22 π-electrons. Chlorophyll also has a similar aromatic system. Aromatic compounds are important in industry. Key aromatic hydrocarbons of commercial interest are benzene, toluene, ""ortho""-xylene and ""para""-xylene."
"would be virtually impossible that two or more separate lineages could have independently developed the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living organisms. Life on Earth is based on carbon and water. Carbon provides stable frameworks for complex chemicals and can be easily extracted from the environment, especially from carbon dioxide. There is no other chemical element whose properties are similar enough to carbon's to be called an analogue; silicon, the element directly below carbon on the periodic table, does not form very many complex stable molecules, and because most of its compounds are water-insoluble, it would be more"
"fundamentally important facts in all of science. All known forms of life are based on the same fundamental biochemical organization: genetic information encoded in DNA, transcribed into RNA, through the effect of protein- and RNA-enzymes, then translated into proteins by (highly similar) ribosomes, with ATP, NADPH and others as energy sources. Analysis of small sequence differences in widely shared substances such as cytochrome c further supports universal common descent. Some 23 proteins are found in all organisms, serving as enzymes carrying out core functions like DNA replication. The fact that only one such set of enzymes exists is convincing evidence"
"leads to an acidification of the stroma that inactivates key enzymes in carbon fixation, which all leads to the production of oxygen free radicals in the chloroplast that then cause oxidative damage. Magnesium in biology Magnesium is an essential element in biological systems. Magnesium occurs typically as the Mg ion. It is an essential mineral nutrient (i.e., element) for life and is present in every cell type in every organism. For example, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the main source of energy in cells, must bind to a magnesium ion in order to be biologically active. What is called ATP is often"
"all matter is made of atoms, which are the smallest constituents of matter that cannot be broken down without losing the basic chemical and physical properties of that matter, was provided by John Dalton in 1803, although the question took a hundred years to settle as proven. Dalton also formulated the law of mass relationships. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev composed his periodic table of elements on the basis of Dalton's discoveries. The synthesis of urea by Friedrich Wöhler opened a new research field, organic chemistry, and by the end of the 19th century, scientists were able to synthesize hundreds of"
"and activation, atom and group transfer chemistry as well as metal properties in biological chemistry. About 99% of mammals' mass are the elements carbon, nitrogen, calcium, sodium, chlorine, potassium, hydrogen, phosphorus, oxygen and sulfur. The organic compounds (proteins, lipids and carbohydrates) contain the majority of the carbon and nitrogen and most of the oxygen and hydrogen is present as water. The entire collection of metal-containing biomolecules in a cell is called the metallome. Paul Ehrlich used organoarsenic (“arsenicals”) for the treatment of syphilis, demonstrating the relevance of metals, or at least metalloids, to medicine, that blossomed with Rosenberg’s discovery of"
"in organic form is present in the vitamins biotin and thiamine, the latter being named for the Greek word for sulfur. Sulfur is an important part of many enzymes and in antioxidant molecules like glutathione and thioredoxin. Organically bonded sulfur is a component of all proteins, as the amino acids cysteine and methionine. Disulfide bonds are largely responsible for the mechanical strength and insolubility of the protein keratin, found in outer skin, hair, and feathers, and the element contributes to their pungent odor when burned. Elemental chlorine is extremely dangerous and poisonous for all lifeforms, and is used as a"
"microorganisms tested in outer space.) An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemicals whose molecules contain carbon. Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the Universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon is abundant in the Sun, stars, comets, and in the atmospheres of most planets. Organic compounds are relatively common in space, formed by ""factories of complex molecular synthesis"" which occur in molecular clouds and circumstellar envelopes, and chemically evolve after reactions are initiated mostly by ionizing radiation. Based on computer model studies, the complex organic molecules necessary"
"Magnesium in biology Magnesium is an essential element in biological systems. Magnesium occurs typically as the Mg ion. It is an essential mineral nutrient (i.e., element) for life and is present in every cell type in every organism. For example, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the main source of energy in cells, must bind to a magnesium ion in order to be biologically active. What is called ATP is often actually Mg-ATP. As such, magnesium plays a role in the stability of all polyphosphate compounds in the cells, including those associated with the synthesis of DNA and RNA. Over 300 enzymes require"
"including organisms, which means that describing a chemical as inorganic does not obligately mean that it does not occur within living things. Friedrich Wöhler's conversion of ammonium cyanate into urea in 1828 is considered the starting point of modern organic chemistry. The Wöhler synthesis is of great historical significance because for the first time an organic compound (urea) was produced from inorganic precursors (the salt ammonium cyanate). This finding contradicted the then-mainstream theory vitalism, which stated that organic matter possessed a special force or ""vital force"" inherent to all things living. Prior to Wöhler's experiment, a sharp boundary was thought"
"Pancha Bhoota Pancha Bhoota or Pancha Maha-Bhoota (, ), five great elements, also five physical elements, is a group of five basic elements, which, according to Hinduism, is the basis of all cosmic creation. These elements are: Prithvi/Bhudevi (Hindi: पृथ्वी, Earth), Apas/Varuna/Jal (Hindi: अप्, Water), Agni (Hindi: अग्नि, Fire), Vayu (Hindi: वायु, Air), Aakash/Dyaus (Hindi: आकाश, Aether). These elements have different characteristics and these also account for different faculties of human experience. In ""ayurveda"" and Indian philosophy, the human body is considered to be made of these five elements. However, Cārvāka did not accept ""Akash"" as basic element as it"
"CHON CHON is a mnemonic acronym for the four most common elements in living organisms: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The acronym CHNOPS, which stands for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, represents the six most important chemical elements whose covalent combinations make up most biological molecules on Earth. Most of the elements are nonmetals. Sulfur is contained in the amino acids cysteine and methionine. Phosphorus is contained in phospholipids, a class of lipids that are a major component of all cell membranes, as they can form lipid bilayers, which keep ions, proteins, and other molecules where they are needed"
"element (by mass) making up Earth, while oxygen is the most common element in the Earth's crust. Chemical elements constitute all of the ordinary matter of the universe. However astronomical observations suggest that ordinary observable matter makes up only about 15% of the matter in the universe: the remainder is dark matter; the composition of this is unknown, but it is not composed of chemical elements. The two lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, were mostly formed in the Big Bang and are the most common elements in the universe. The next three elements (lithium, beryllium and boron) were formed mostly"
"Chemical element A chemical element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (that is, the same atomic number, or ""Z""). For example, the atomic number of oxygen is 8, so the element oxygen consists of all atoms which have exactly 8 protons. 118 elements have been identified, of which the first 94 occur naturally on Earth with the remaining 24 being synthetic elements. There are 80 elements that have at least one stable isotope and 38 that have exclusively radionuclides, which decay over time into other elements. Iron is the most abundant"
"as a common element of all known life. It is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. ""What we normally think of as 'life' is based on chains of carbon atoms, with a few other atoms, such as nitrogen or phosphorus"", per Stephen Hawking in a 2008 lecture, ""carbon [...] has the richest chemistry."" The most important characteristics of carbon as a basis for the chemistry of life are, that it has four valence bonds, and that the energy required to make or break a bond is at an appropriate level for"
"Nanotechnology for water purification Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials commercialized for water purification Water is the most essential element to every life on this Earth. It’s a substance composed of the chemical elements hydrogen and oxygen. Water has always played a prominent role in human civilization. A sufficient supply of safe drinking water is one of the important requirement for a healthy life, but waterborne diseases plays a deadly role in creating large numbers of deaths in many parts of the world. All living things require water to grow and reproduce their own kind. Water is a tasteless and odorless liquid at"
"an element that is less electronegative than it. The most important are AlC, BC, CaC, FeC, HfC, SiC, TaC, TiC, and WC. It was once thought that organic compounds could only be created by living organisms. Over time, however, scientists learned how to synthesize organic compounds in the lab. The number of organic compounds is immense and the known number of defined compounds is close to 10 million. However, an indefinitely large number of such compounds are theoretically possible. By definition, an organic compound must contain at least one atom of carbon, but this criterion is not generally regarded as"
"abandoned in favor of the D- and L-notation, which refers to the absolute configuration of the asymmetric center farthest from the carbonyl group, and in concordance with the configuration of D- or L-glyceraldehyde. Since glucose is a basic necessity of many organisms, a correct understanding of its chemical makeup and structure contributed greatly to a general advancement in organic chemistry. This understanding occurred largely as a result of the investigations of Emil Fischer, a German chemist who received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his findings. The synthesis of glucose established the structure of organic material and consequently formed"
"in platinum ores. Osmium is the least abundant stable element in the earth's crust, found only in minor traces in platinum ores. Hassium is produced only in nuclear reactors and has never been observed in nature nor isolated in pure form. Iron is an essential nutrient for all living organisms, from archaea to humans. It is a major component in hemoglobin, a protein that makes blood red and transfers oxygen to muscles, and is also found in many other proteins. Ruthenium, osmium, and hassium have no known role in the human body. Group 8 element Group 8 is a group"
"the building blocks of proteins, the substance of living tissue. In addition, neither sulfur, required for the building of proteins, nor phosphorus, needed for the formation of DNA, RNA, and the adenosine phosphates essential to metabolism, is rare. Relative abundance in space does not always mirror differentiated abundance within planets; of the four life elements, for instance, only oxygen is present in any abundance in the Earth's crust. This can be partly explained by the fact that many of these elements, such as hydrogen and nitrogen, along with their simplest and most common compounds, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide,"