What roles do polysaccharides play in living things?

1 Answer
Linica Uday
Nov 8, 2016

Polysaccharides are an important class of biological polymers. Their function in living things is usually either structure or storage related.

Explanation:

Storage
Starch is used as a storage polysaccharide in plants. In animals , the structurally similar glucose polymer is the more densely branched glycogen and is sometimes called animal starch.

Structural
Chitin and cellulose are examples of structural polysaccharides. Cellulose is used in the cell walls of plants and other organisms and is said to be the most abundant organic molecule on earth.
Chitin is found in arthropod exoskeletons and in the cell walls of some fungi.

Related questions
See all questions in Carbohydrates
Impact of this question
10293 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License