Video Transcript
Proteins are biological polymers. What monomers will join together to form a protein?
Here’s a typical protein that may look like a bunch of scribbles, but it’s actually a folded polymer of amino acids. And if we were to unfold this protein, we can see this polypeptide of these different amino acids all bonded in sequence. There are 20 different types of amino acids that can be joined together to form a protein. Each of these amino acids has the same basic structure. The central carbon, or 𝛼 carbon, can form four bonds: one with an amino group, one with a carboxyl group, one with a hydrogen, and one with an R group, sometimes called the side chain.
There’s 20 different side chains, and this is why there are 20 different amino acids. For instance, the amino acid glycine has a hydrogen atom as its side chain, while the amino acid alanine has a methyl group. Depending on the type of amino acids and the order that they’re connected, the polymer will fold differently, leading to different proteins with different functions. Therefore, amino acids are the monomers that join together to form a protein.
