BMB 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Carboxylic Acid, Proline, Amine

• School: University of Miami
• Department: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Course: BMB 401
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Proteins (or polypeptides) are polymers made up of building blocks, or monomeric units, called amino acids . There are 20 naturally-occurring amino acids referred to as standard amino acids or -amino acids . Standard amino acids share a common structure but differ in their side chains the so-called r group. Amino acids are linked together to generate a polypeptide chain via so-called peptide or amide bonds. Amino acids are often abbreviated to aa or aa eg the polypeptide chain is 20-aa long. Except for proline, all amino acids are constructed from a primary amino (-nh2) group and a carboxylic acid (-cooh) group linked together via a carbon atom called c . For its part, proline harbors a secondary amino (-rnh) group and a carboxylic acid (-cooh) Amino acid nomenclature is based on a three-letter code and a one-letter code eg glycine (the simplest amino acid with r=h) can be denoted as gly or g .