Some of the 20 Amino Acids

These are models of some amino acids, ready to be assembled into proteins like the one in the second figure. Proteins are strands of amino acids formed in a way somewhat similar to the nucleotide strand (DNA). However, protein strands are much more flexible in space. They are comparable to a loose ball of wool (just take a look at the second figure, or a low-resolution VRML view of the same protein), and not a spool-like "double helix".

If you have a VRML viewer installed, click on any amino acid and you will get a 3-dimensional "hands-on" experience.

The amino acid pictures were taken from the Image Library of Biological Macromolecules. (See also Jürgen Sühnel, Image Library of Biological Macromolecules, Comput. Appl. Biosci. 1996, 12, 227-229.)

Alexander Sczyrba and Georg Fuellen
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