Why Is Carbon Important to Living Systems?

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Brian with Ericksontutoring.blogspot.com. Today we're going to discuss why carbon is important to living systems. So, carbon it's worth noting is the fourth most abundant chemical; or the fourth most abundant element in the universe. It's also extremely abundant on Earth. It's actually the basis of life as we know it. Without carbon things just wouldn't be the same. One of the main reasons why carbon is is able to form these long polymers, so long chains of atoms connected to each other. These polymers are stable at normal Earth temperatures. So, that's key. Carbons form all sorts of different molecules. Things like starches and sugars, nucleic acids; really it is the basis of just about all life as we know it. Because of that it is just immensely important to living systems as a whole, because it's important to every organism that's within that living system. So, this has been a brief discussion of why carbon is important to living systems."