Carbohydrates are built from monomers called monosaccharides that join to form larger molecules known as what?

• A. Polysaccharides
• B. Disaccharides
• C. Oligopeptides
• D. Nucleotides

Answer: (A)

When monosaccharides join together, they form long carbohydrate chains called polysaccharides. These are polymeric carbohydrates made up of many sugar units linked by glycosidic bonds, such as starch, glycogen, and cellulose. Two monosaccharides linked together form a disaccharide (like sucrose or lactose), which is a smaller category within carbohydrates but not the long-chain form. Oligopeptides are short chains of amino acids, not sugars, and nucleotides are the building blocks of nucleic acids like DNA and RNA. So the larger carbohydrate molecules produced by linking many monosaccharides are polysaccharides.