The usual linear diagrams and formulas depicting saturated fatty acids also serve to explain the ability of saturated fatty acids to pack tightly together, with very little intervening space. Unsaturated fatty acids, on the other hand are unable to pack as tightly because of the rotational constraint impoarted by the double bond.. Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): The Structure of Saturated Fatty Acids. (a) There is a zigzag pattern formed by the carbon-to-carbon single bonds in the ball-and-stick model of a palmitic acid molecule. (b) A space-filling model of palmitic acid shows the overall straightness of a saturated fatty acid molecule.
![[DIAGRAM] Essential Fatty Acid Diagram](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kumari_Ubhayasekera/publication/30073212/figure/download/fig1/AS:309965785976855@1450913010921/The-chemical-structures-of-some-common-fatty-acids.png "[DIAGRAM] Essential Fatty Acid Diagram")
Fatty acid synthase (FAS), a large multienzyme complex, carries out the chain elongation steps of fatty acid biosynthesis. Condensation : It is the first step of fatty acid elongation. Acetyl-CoA and malonyl-CoA are joined together by β-ketoacyl-ACP synthase (also known as the condensing enzymes), resulting in a four-carbon molecule known as.. Three-dimensional representations of several fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have perfectly straight chain structure. Unsaturated ones are typically bent, unless they have a trans configuration.. In chemistry, particularly in biochemistry, a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with an aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated.Most naturally occurring fatty acids have an.