Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook American Heritage Coll. While it is only the fourteenth most common element on earth, carbon forms by far the greatest number of different compounds. Organic chemistry is of vital importance to the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and textile industries, where a prime concern is the synthesis of new organic molecules and polymers . In general, a particular type of organic compound, such as an alcohol , aldehyde , ether , or ketone , is identified by the presence of a characteristic functional group of atoms. The functional group is the part of the molecule most responsible for its particular chemical nature.
Organic compounds containing nitrogen are of great importance in biochemistry .