Match the following lipid types with the correct description.

Question

A) Fatty acid. _____ 1. Membrane lipids with a glycerol backbone.

B) Triacylglycerol. _____ 2. Phospholipid especially common in nerve cells.

C) Phospholipid. _____ 3. One of the simplest forms of a glycolipid.

D) Sphingosine. _____ 4. Lipids covalently attached to carbohydrate groups.

E) Glycerophospholipid. _____ 5. Chains of hydrogen-bearing carbon atoms with a carboxylic acid.

F) Sphingomyelin. _____ 6. Complex glycolipids with a sialic acid residue.

G) Glycolipid. _____ 7. A complex amino alcohol backbone for membrane lipids.

H) Cerebroside. _____ 8. Major class of membrane lipids.

I) Ganglioside. _____ 9. Long-term storage form of fatty acids.

Accepted Answer

Alright. So this practice problem wants us to match the following lipid types over here in this left column with the correct description over here in this right column. And, of course, there are many different strategies you can use to solve this problem and we're just going to go through one of those strategies and so option A here says fatty acid and we know already that fatty acids are just long hydrocarbon chains with a carboxylic acid group at the very end. And so, the option that best suits fatty acid is gonna be option 5. Chains of hydrogen bearing carbon atoms with a carboxylic acid group at the very end. So what we can do is go ahead and put a 5 up here to match it with number 5 and then go ahead and cross off 5 from our list. Now, moving on, what we have is for B, triacylglycerol which has the word glycerol embedded in it. So, we know that it's going to have a glycerol molecule as the platform and the try here indicates that there are 3 fatty acid chains that are ester linked to it and we also talked about the functions of triacylglycerols in our previous lesson video. So, we know that they act as long term energy storage of fatty acid molecules and so, the answer that best suits that is going to be 9 and we can go ahead and cross off 9 from our list. So, next what we have here are phospholipids and phospholipids we know are just going to be lipids that are containing at least 1 phosphate group And we know that phospholipids are gonna be a major component of all cell membranes. And so because that's true, we know that the best, answer that matches here is gonna be 8. A major class of membrane lipids and so we can go ahead and put 8 here to match it with 8. Next what we have is sphingosine and sphingosine is the alternate platform to glycerol and so sphingosine we know is a complex amino alcohol backbone for specific membrane lipids and And so we can go ahead and match it with number 7 here and cross off 7 from our list. Next, what we have are Glycerophospholipids. So it has the glycero pre prefix. So we know that it's gonna have a glycerol platform molecule and it also has the phospho prefix. So we know that it they're gonna have phosphate groups attached. And so, glycerophospholipids are going to be membrane lipids with a glycerol backbone. And so we can go ahead and match this to option 1 and go ahead and cross off 1 from our list. Now, next what we have is sphingomyelin and you might recall sphingomyelin is a sphingophospholipid and it's specifically found in the myelin sheath, which recall is just a membranous structure around the axons of nerve cells. So these are going to be sphingophospholipids that are especially common in nerve cells. So we can go ahead and label that as 2 and cross that off our list. Next, what we have are glycolipids which really are just lipids that are covalently attached to carbohydrates since the glyco prefix here, not to be confused with the glycero prefix. The glyco prefix means, carbohydrates or sugars. So, again, lipids that are covalently attached to carbohydrate groups would be glycolipids. So we can go ahead and put 4 here and cross all 4 and then, you might recall from our previous lesson videos that cerebro sides and gangliosides are really specific types of glycolipids. There's specific types of sphingoglycolipids and cerebroside specifically only have one single sugar residue as the head group and so that makes them one of the simplest forms of a glycolipid. So, we can go ahead and put 3 here and cross that off our list and then, of course, last but not least, we have the ganglioside which is going to be the complex glycoluh lipid with a cialic acid residue and so we can go ahead and match it to that and then, of course, that here concludes this practice problem and I'll see you guys in our next video.

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