Flowchart
Comparative Table for Cellulose, Starch and Glycogen
Flowchart content
Cellulose
Glycogen
Starch
One of the most important structural polysaccharides.
Makes up most of the walls of the living cells of plants, the fluffy white bolls of cotton plants, and about half the bulk of tree trunks.
cellulose forms the cell wall that surrounds each plant cell.
Plant cell walls often consists of cellulose fibers in layers that run at right angles to each other to resist tearing in both directions.
Cllulose is composed of up 10000 glucose submits.
In a bagel into its component glucose molecules, which taste sweet.
Plants often use starch as a energy-storage molecule.
Starch is commonly formed in roots and seeds, consists of branched chains of up to half a million glucose subunits.
Starch grains inside potato cells store energy that will allow the potato to generate new plants in the spring.
A section of a single starch molecules.
Starches consists of branched chains of up to half a million glucose subunits.
Glycogen a similar polysaccharides.
animals commonly store glycogen.
Glycogen, stored in the liver and muscles of animals, including people, is also a chain of glucose subunits, but is more highly branched than starch.
Chitin
The supportive outer coverings of insects, crabs and spiders are made of chitin.
Its a polysaccharides in which the glucose subunits bear a nitrogen-containing functional group.
Chitin also stiffens the cell walls of many fungi, including mushrooms.
Chitin has the same glucose bonding configuration as cellulose does.
In chitin the glucose subunits have a nitrogen-containing functional group replacing one of the hydroxyl groups.
Flexible chitin supports the otherwise soft bodies of athropods and must fungi.
