Structure – Amino Acids

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produced by natural chemistry.
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Now there's other ways of organizing amino acids and one of the ways that we
can organize amino acids is by their R groups. In this classification scheme we
can see for example amino acids that have R groups that are what we describe
as hydrophobic, meaning that they don't like to associate with water. This
includes the aromatic amino acids of tryptophan, phenylalanine and tyrosine. It
also includes amino acids that have aliphatic side chains, such as
methionine, isoleucine, leucine, valine, glycine, alanine and proline. Another
grouping of amino acids by R group are those that are hydrophilic, that is that
they have an ability to bond with and associate with water. In this category we
have the amino acids that contain hydroxyl groups in their side chain; this
includes serine, threonine and tyrosine. Now you'll notice that tyrosine has been
in two groups and these groups are not mutually exclusive and as you watch and
read different authors, you'll see that authors will place amino acids in different
groups based on their own perceived chemistries.
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A second category when under hydrophilic is sulfhydryl containing, meaning that
they contain a sulfur attached to a hydrogen. There's only one amino acid that's
in this category, and that cysteine. The carboxyamides or carboxamides as they
are also called, are amino acids asparagine and glutamine. The ionic amino acids
are those that at physiological pH will have either a plus or a minus charge. These
include the carboxylates, which are aspartic acid and glutamic acid. The
carboxylates, when they ionize will have a negative charge.
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The amines at physiological pH contain an extra proton and this extra proton
gives these amines a positive charge, the amines of course include lysine,
histidine and arginine.
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Now as I said some amino acids appear in more than one category and these
aren't exclusive in any way, and again I remind you that authors do differ in how
they categorize amino acids.
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What I would like to do now is go through and describe each of the amino acids
and point