3.1.7 water

Question 1

What are the 5 properties of water and their importance in biology?

Answer 1

• High heat capacity, allowing it to buffer changes in temperature
• Relatively high latent heat of vaporisation, giving it a cooling effect with little water lost to evaporation
• it is a metabolite in many reactions such as condensation and hydrolysis reactions
• it is an important solvent in which many metabollic processes occur
• strong cohesion between water molecules, this supports columns of water in the tube like transport cells in plants, and produces surface tension where water meets air