Proteins and Amino Acids

2017-10-02

What kinds of materials go into building a factory?

How does one chemical (protein) achieve such a vast array of functions?

Conceptual goals

• The sequence of a protein determines is structure, which determines its function
• Understand how concatenating relatively few amino acids can lead to a huge diversity of possible functional proteins.

Skill goals

• Identify the amino acids based on their chemical structure.
• Reason about how their individual chemistry leads to distinct biological roles.

The power of combinatorics!

• Directional (has front and back)
• You can make it as long as you want
• You can swap in any car at any point in the train

On your handout, circle amino acids whose sidechain participates in:

• hydrophobic effect
• Van der Waal's
• hydrogen bonds
• ionic interactions
• covalent bonds (without enzymatic help)

Amino acids fill a large volume of "property space"

Key points:

• Proteins are formed from amino acids, arranged into a chain
• Chain is formed by a series of peptide bonds
• Because there are 20 naturally-occuring amino acids, a vast number of sequences are possible
• These 20 amino acids cover a wide range of chemical properties

Big ideas

Amphipathic molecules lead to large-scale structure

Combinatorial polymers allow creation of a vast number of molecules