Summary
Proteins: Amino acids
- All proteins are biopoymers build up from 20 standard amino acids
- All 20 amino acids have a similarstructure: they all have a mainchain, consisting of an amino group and an acidic group, attached to a central carbon, named CA; the remaining atoms form the sidechains, that can be hydrophobic, polar or charged.
- The conformation of he backbone of amino acids is restricted (see Ramachandran plot), except for Glycine that does not have a sidechain
- There are three main representations of proteins: space-filling (also called CPK for Corey-Pauling-Koltun), wireframe, or cartoon