Читать книгу Biochemistry For Dummies - John Moore T., Richard Langley H., John T. Moore - Страница 44

Alkanes are hydrocarbons — compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen, with no traditional functional groups. For this reason, they aren’t very reactive. Alkenes and alkynes are also hydrocarbons. They contain carbon-carbon double and triple bonds, respectively. The presence of more than one type of bond makes them more reactive. Aromatic hydrocarbons, normally ring structures with alternating single and double carbon-to-carbon bonds, contain one or more aromatic systems, which are much less reactive than other systems containing double bonds. Alkynes aren’t very common in biological systems. Figure 3-2 shows the structure of these compounds.

FIGURE 3-2: Examples of alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, and aromatic hydrocarbons.