What are the 20 amino acids?

Question

What are the 20 amino acids?

Answer 1

essential and non-essential.  Eleven are made from the body itself and the rest need to be put in through our diet

alanine

arginine

asparagine

aspartic acid

cysteine

glutamine

glutamic acid

glycine

histidine

isoleucine

leucine

lysine

methionine

phenylalanine

proline

serine

threonine

tryptophan

tyrosine

valine

These are the essential ones in ur body but there are over 300 amino acids

Amino acids are very small biomolecules with an average molecular weight of about 135 daltons. These organic acids exist naturally in a zwitterion state where the carboxylic acid moiety is ionized and the basic amino group is protonated. The entire class of amino acids has a common backbone of an organic carboxylic acid group and an amino group attached to a saturated carbon atom. The simplest member of this group is glycine, where the saturated carbon atom is unsubstituted, rendering it optically inactive.

The rest of the 20 most common amino acids are optically active existing as both D and L stereoisomers. Naturally occurring amino acids that are incorporated into proteins are, for the most part, the levorotary (L) isomer. Substituents on the alpha (or saturated) carbon atom vary from lower alkyl groups to aromatic amines and alcohols. There are also acidic and basic side chains as well as thiol chains that can be oxidized to dithiol linkages between two similar amino acids.

Answer 2

The twenty amino acids (that make up proteins)each have assigned to them both three-letter (can be upper or lower case) and one-letter codes (upper case). This makes it quicker and easier for notation purposes and are worth learning. The following list gives these notations along with hypertext references to download amino acid gif images and also interactive molecules.

The format of the list is: amino acid name - 3 letter code - 1 letter code (reference to gif image, reference to interactive molecule)

alanine - ala - A (gif, interactive)

arginine - arg - R (gif, interactive)

asparagine - asn - N (gif, interactive)

aspartic acid - asp - D (gif, interactive)

cysteine - cys - C (gif, interactive)

glutamine - gln - Q (gif, interactive)

glutamic acid - glu - E (gif, interactive)

glycine - gly - G (gif, interactive)

histidine - his - H (gif, interactive)

isoleucine - ile - I (gif, interactive)

leucine - leu - L (gif, interactive)

lysine - lys - K (gif, interactive)

methionine - met - M (gif, interactive)

phenylalanine - phe - F (gif, interactive)

proline - pro - P (gif, interactive)

serine - ser - S (gif, interactive)

threonine - thr - T (gif, interactive)

tryptophan - trp - W (gif, interactive)

tyrosine - tyr - Y (gif, interactive)

valine - val - V (gif, interactive)

Sometimes it is not possible two differentiate two closely related amino acids, therefore we have the special cases:

asparagine/aspartic acid - asx - B

glutamine/glutamic acid - glx - Z