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Three-dimensional representations of several fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have perfectly straight chain structure. Unsaturated ones are typically bent, unless they have a trans configuration. In chemistry, particularly in biochemistry, a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with an aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated.
Indeed, they can be viewed as a string of beads, with each bead representing a single nucleotide or amino acid monomer linked together through covalent chemical bonds into a very long chain. In most cases, the monomers within the chain have a strong propensity to interact with other amino acids or nucleotides.
Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule. Proteins are polymers – specifically polypeptides – formed from sequences of amino acids, which are the monomers of the polymer. A single amino acid monomer may also be called a residue, which indicates a
The spiral has about 3.6 amino acids per turn, and the amino acid side chains stick out from the cylinder of the helix. Beta pleated sheets are formed by backbone hydrogen bonds between individual beta strands each of which is in an "extended", or fully stretched-out, conformation.
The amino acid residues are always joined by peptide bonds. Protein , though used colloquially to refer to any polypeptide, refers to larger or fully functional forms and can consist of several polypeptide chains as well as single chains.
As both the amine and carboxylic acid groups of amino acids can react to form amide bonds, one amino acid molecule can react with another and become joined through an amide linkage. This polymerization of amino acids is what creates proteins. This condensation reaction yields the newly formed peptide bond and a molecule of water.
Protein sequence is typically notated as a string of letters, listing the amino acids starting at the amino-terminal end through to the carboxyl-terminal end. Either a three letter code or single letter code can be used to represent the 22 naturally encoded amino acids, as well as mixtures or ambiguous amino acids (similar to nucleic acid ...
To form carbon-to-carbon double bonds, hydrogen atoms are removed from the carbon chain. In cellular metabolism, unsaturated fat molecules contain less energy (i.e., fewer calories) than an equivalent amount of saturated fat. The greater the degree of unsaturation in a fatty acid (i.e., the more double bonds in the fatty acid) the more ...