Protein Essay
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Protein Essay.
Structure of proteins
Proteins are made up of amino acids.
These have a chain side, which makes up different types of amino acids that then go onto form the different types of proteins. There are 20 kinds of naturally occurring amino acids, which bond together to form different kinds of proteins, which in turn have a wide variety of function. Each amino acid is formed of an amino acid end (the amino group) and a carboxyl end (the carboxyl group). These join up by condensation to form peptide bonds and then onto proteins.
The above diagram shows the condensation reaction that takes place to form a peptide bond between two amino acids, which go on to form a dipepitde, then three amino acids form a tripeptide. More than three amino acids joining together becomes a polypeptide. It is the polypeptides that go on to form proteins. It is only when a polypeptide becomes functional that it does become a protein though it is hard to say exactly when this happens...