Without the element carbon, life as we know it would not exist.
Carbon provides the framework for all tissues of plants and animals.
These tissues are built of elements grouped around chains or rings made of carbon atoms. Sugar, starch, and paper are compounds of carbon with hydrogen and oxygen. Proteins such as hair, meat, and silk contain carbon and other elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. More than six and a half million compounds of the element carbon, many times more than those of any other element, are known, and more are discovered and synthesized regularly. Hundreds of carbon compounds are commercially important but the element itself in the forms of diamond, graphite, charcoal, carbon black, and fullerene is also indispensable.