Section 2 - Primary Structure
Index to Course Material
To best appreciate the contents of this chapter you need to INTERACTIVELY
EXAMINE a number of amino acid structures. If you haven't done so already, we
STRONGLY URGE you to install the FREE molecular viewer software, RasMol
and configure it to be automatically invoked by chemical/MIME. See our
Technology Page to find out how.
Proteins consist of one or more polypeptide chains, each of which is a linear
polymer of amino acid residues. Twenty types of amino acid occur naturally in
proteins. A polypeptide can be defined simply by its sequence of amino acids.
This sequence is referred to as the primary structure. The primary
structure of a protein contains all the necessary information required for
the manifestation of higher, three-dimensional levels of structure.
The Amino Acids
The following three tutorials on the amino acids include interactive molecules, which
you can view with RasMol.
The following resource contains interactive molecules for use with the Alchemy mol format.
- The Amino Acids,
at the Free University of Berlin, by Vera Heinau and Burkhard Kirste
Summary of Amino Acid Properties
Molecular Viewers
Rasmol
If you do not have yet have Rasmol, refer to the information
under the Technology Index, which includes links telling you how to (1) get and install Rasmol and
(2) configure your WWW browser so that it automatically invokes Rasmol when you click on an
appropriate link (i.e. the URL of a pdb-format molecular structure file). Then return to the
material above.
Kinemage
If you have Mage installed and your browser configured, then the
Kinemages for Chapter 1 of
Branden and Tooze will be of interest. This page indexing the B&T kinemages has been
set up by Gail Schuman of Brookhaven Structural Biology. Again, refer to the
help in the PPS Technology Index if necessary.
Further Reading/Revision Material
Thanks to
- Ronald Beavis and David Fenyo
- Simon Brocklehurst
- Jon Cooper
- Shane Crotty
- Raj Gill
- Vera Heinau and Burkhard Kirste
- Jens Loesel
- Alan Mills
- Sami Raza
- Francois Savary
- Alan Ward
- The VSNS-BCD Course organizers: Georg Fuellen, Andreas Dress, Robert Giegerich, Steffen Schulze-Kremer, David Steffen.
Index to Course Material
Last updated 30th Aug '96