NB1 - The images and interactive molecules from both lists below are referenced directly from Klotho, the Biochemical Compounds Declarative Database at the Institute of Biomedical Computing, Wahington University.
NB2 - Here is a text document giving amino acid side chain representations.
The Twenty Amino Acids
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
Here is list where amino acids are grouped according to the characteristics of the side chains:
- Aliphatic - alanine (gif, interactive), glycine (gif, interactive), isoleucine (gif, interactive), leucine (gif, interactive), proline (gif, interactive), valine (gif, interactive)
- Aromatic - phenylalanine (gif, interactive), tryptophan (gif, interactive), tyrosine (gif, interactive)
- Acidic - aspartic acid (gif, interactive), glutamic acid (gif, interactive)
- Basic - arginine (gif, interactive), histidine (gif, interactive), lysine (gif, interactive)
- Hydroxylic - serine (gif, interactive), threonine (gif, interactive)
- Sulphur-containing - cysteine (gif, interactive), methionine (gif, interactive)
- Amidic (containing amide group) - asparagine (gif, interactive), glutamine (gif, interactive)
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