Hydrolysis

They do this by adding water to the covalent bond holding them together.

These are called hydrolysis reactions, with hydro meaning water and lysis meaning to pull apart or loose it.

Hydrolysis is a process that cleaves one big molecule into two smaller molecules using water.

Hydrolysis lets us reuse the building blocks from the producers and the consumers that we eat to build up our own macromolecules.

Each amino acid from a plant protein can be recycled to make the specific proteins that we need.

And the different proteins that organisms make contribute to the uniqueness among all living things.

Two things worth naming.

Hydrolysis is the first.

Water can chemically break the bond between two amino acids.

The bond is literally undone by water.