Biology 1002B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Macromolecular Crowding, Asparagine, Glutamine
18 Apr 2012
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The two fields, biochemistry and genetics used to be completely apart. Now if you are a biochemist, it"s easy to find the gene that encodes the protein, and if you are a geneticist it"s easy to take a gene sequence and synthesize the protein. Proteins are one of the 4 main biochemical families: carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids, lipids. Proteins are important-structural and functional molecules of a cell. If you can understand proteins, you understand biology basically. Polymers (a category of big molecules, a long chain of nearly identical smaller molecules joined in a long chain) Proteins and peptides are composed of amino acids. Amino acids are monomers = smaller building block molecule. Different: side chains (called r groups), giving different properties. Same: small organic molecules with both carboxyl (acid) and amino (base) groups (peptide backbone) 3 categories (based on the chemistry of the r group): polar. O or oh in r group: charged.
