Cell signalingIn biology, cell signaling (cell signalling in British English) or cell communication is the ability of a cell to receive, process, and transmit signals with its environment and with itself. Cell signaling is a fundamental property of all cellular life in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Signals that originate from outside a cell (or extracellular signals) can be physical agents like mechanical pressure, voltage, temperature, light, or chemical signals (e.g., small molecules, peptides, or gas).
Tissue (biology)In biology, tissue is a historically derived biological organizational level between cells and a complete organ. A tissue is therefore often thought of as an assembly of similar cells and their extracellular matrix from the same origin that together carry out a specific function. Organs are then formed by the functional grouping together of multiple tissues. The English word "tissue" derives from the French word "tissu", the past participle of the verb tisser, "to weave".
BiopolymerBiopolymers are natural polymers produced by the cells of living organisms. Like other polymers, biopolymers consist of monomeric units that are covalently bonded in chains to form larger molecules. There are three main classes of biopolymers, classified according to the monomers used and the structure of the biopolymer formed: polynucleotides, polypeptides, and polysaccharides. The Polynucleotides, RNA and DNA, are long polymers of nucleotides. Polypeptides include proteins and shorter polymers of amino acids; some major examples include collagen, actin, and fibrin.
Complex event processingEvent processing is a method of tracking and analyzing (processing) streams of information (data) about things that happen (events), and deriving a conclusion from them. Complex event processing (CEP) consists of a set of concepts and techniques developed in the early 1990s for processing real-time events and extracting information from event streams as they arrive. The goal of complex event processing is to identify meaningful events (such as opportunities or threats) in real-time situations and respond to them as quickly as possible.
Hydration reactionIn chemistry, a hydration reaction is a chemical reaction in which a substance combines with water. In organic chemistry, water is added to an unsaturated substrate, which is usually an alkene or an alkyne. This type of reaction is employed industrially to produce ethanol, isopropanol, and butan-2-ol. Several million tons of ethylene glycol are produced annually by the hydration of oxirane, a cyclic compound also known as ethylene oxide: C2H4O + H2O → HO–CH2CH2–OH Acid catalysts are typically used.
Food browningBrowning is the process of food turning brown due to the chemical reactions that take place within. The process of browning is one of the chemical reactions that take place in food chemistry and represents an interesting research topic regarding health, nutrition, and food technology. Though there are many different ways food chemically changes over time, browning in particular falls into two main categories: enzymatic versus non-enzymatic browning processes.
Polyphenol oxidasePolyphenol oxidase (PPO; also polyphenol oxidase i, chloroplastic), an enzyme involved in fruit browning, is a tetramer that contains four atoms of copper per molecule. PPO may accept monophenols and/or o-diphenols as substrates. The enzyme works by catalyzing the o-hydroxylation of monophenol molecules in which the benzene ring contains a single hydroxyl substituent to o-diphenols (phenol molecules containing two hydroxyl substituents at the 1, 2 positions, with no carbon between).
