Organic Chemistry

Code:

CN11004

Acronym:

QORG

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Health Sciences
OFICIAL	Physical Sciences

Instance: 2014/2015 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Course/CS Responsible:	Nutrition Sciences

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
CNUP	90	Plano oficial	1	-	5,5	56	148,5

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

The contributions that each one of you will receive for their scientific, professional and human formation are not in any way confined to school walls.

The main agent of that training is always each one of you asking questions and finding answers that will form part of the personal knowledge collected from multiple sources. The variety of these sources is increasingly wide in a world that, with the recent advances in information technology, increasingly resembles a large village. In old times the school could play the role of privileged and unquestioned source of knowledge, at present this role no longer makes sense.

The role of schools and teachers, in our view, is to encourage and assist the students in pursuit of their own training and to facilitate this process by proposing topics for study which act as stages of its formation. The choice of these themes, and the depth with which they are developed, is not an abstract exercise, impartial and thorough, but rather the result of a series of questionable choices and continually reshaped by new challenges that science is proposing and also by personal experience of teachers, either as teachers or as researchers.

Being part of a series of topics proposed for the reflection of the students during their degree in Nutritional Sciences, this curricular unit of organic chemistry is very close to the curricular units of Biochemistry I (also taught in the first year of the course) and Biochemistry II and Biochemistry III (bought taught in the second year).

The same teaching staff is responsible for the four curricular units, with organic chemistry being understood by this team as a sub-step (in fact the first!) in the process of language acquisition needed for Biochemistry and in the knowledge of their methods of study and its fundamental laws.

In this sub-step we put particular emphasis on (1) the study of the chemical structures of the living organisms and (2) the study of general aspects of chemistry and organic chemistry, with particular interest for understanding the chemical transformation occurring in living organisms.

Learning outcomes and competences

At the end of this Curricular Unit, students should have acquired theoretical and/or practical skills to enable them:

• To identify the diversity of the composition of living organisms,

• To identify, understand and describe (theoretically and/or in the laboratory) the different structure and reaction characteristics of the macromolecules present in living organisms and/or food,

• To understand the general mechanisms of enzymatic catalysis and regulation.

Working method

Presencial

Program

Chemical components of living organisms: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, water and inorganic compounds. Structure of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins. Aspects of general chemistry and organic chemistry with particular interest for the understanding of chemical transformations of the living organisms and their own food. Functional groups, isomerism, chemical equilibria, kinetics and chemical reactions, acid-base and oxidation-reduction reactions. Enzymatic reactions (catalysis and functional classification) and its regulation. Composition of biological fluids and phase systems. Alkaline phosphatase.

Mandatory literature

Nelson David L.; Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry. ISBN: 978-0-7167-7108-1

Complementary Bibliography

Thomas M. Devlin; Textbook of Biochemistry with Clinical Correlations, 2010
Robert Murray, David Bender, Kathleen M. Botham, Peter J. Kennelly, Victor Rodwell & P. Anthony Weil; Harpers Illustrated Biochemistry, 2012

Teaching methods and learning activities

Teaching methodologies:

Weekly/per student, 2 lectures of 1 h each (for 13 weeks) and 1 practical session of 2 h (for 11 weeks).

Evaluation:

1. Final written exam: 16 out 20 points.

2. Laboratorial evaluation: 4 out 20 points [consisting of some written questions, in laboratorial classes, at the end of a given set of lectures and laboratorial classes (1.5 points), regarding macromolecules and functional groups; a small written report regarding the enzymes laboratorial classes (1 point) and laboratorial performance (1.5 points)].

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	80,00
Participação presencial	7,50
Teste	7,50
Trabalho escrito	5,00
Total:	100,00

Calculation formula of final grade

FC = 0,8 x WE + 0,075 x LE + 0,075 WT + 0,05 WR

FC - final classification (ou of 20 points)
WE - classification obtained in te final written exam (out of 20 points)
LE - classification of the performance obtained at laboratorai sessions (out of 20 points)
WT - mean of the classifications obtained in the small written tests(out of 20 points)
WR - classification obtained in the written report from the laboratorial sessions on enzymes