Thursday, May 19, 2005

Amino Acids

Amino acids are biochemical building blocks. They form short polymer chains called peptides or polypeptides which in turn form structures called proteins.

All twenty amino acids are encoded by the standard genetic code and are called proteinogenic or standard amino acids. Rarer, more complicated ones are produced by the body and are called nonstandard. Proline is the only proteinogenic amino acid whose side group is cyclic and links to the a-amino group, forming a secondary amino group. Formerly, proline was misleadingly called an imino acid. Other amino acids contained in proteins are usually formed by post-translational modification, that is modification after translation (protein synthesis). These modifications are often essential for the function of the protein. At least two amino acids other than the standard 20 are sometimes incorporated into proteins during translation:

Selenocysteine is incorporated into some proteins at a UGA codon, which is normally a stop codon.
Pyrrolysine is used by some methanogens in enzymes that they use to produce methane. It is coded for similarity to selenocysteine but with the codon UAG instead.
Although only 20 amino acids are genetically coded, over 100 have been found in nature. Some of these have been detected in meteorites, especially in a type known as carbonaceous chondrites. Microorganisms and plants often produce very uncommon amino acids, which can be found in peptidic antibiotics (e.g. nisin or alamethicin). Lanthionine is a sulfide-bridged alanine dimer which is found together with unsaturated amino acids in lantibiotics (antibiotic peptides of microbial origin). 1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) is a small disubstituted cyclic amino acid and a key intermediate in the production of the plant hormone ethylene.

In addition to amino acids for protein synthesis, there are other biologically important amino acids, such as the neurotransmitters glycine, GABA and glutamate, as well as carnitine (used in lipid transport within a cell), ornithine, citrulline, homocysteine, hydroxyproline, hydroxylysine, and sarcosine.

Some of the 20 standard amino acids are called essential amino acids, because they cannot be synthesized by the body from other compounds through chemical reactions, but instead must be taken in with food. In humans, the essential amino acids are lysine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine, and (in children) histidine and arginine.