Amino Acids

An amino acid is the monomer in proteins, the complex molecules (often containing thousands of atoms) that play key roles in most processes in life, including providing structure to cells, identifying cells by protruding from the cell membrane, catalyzing myriad reactions, regulating the cell cycle, and more. Amino acids have full names, but for simplicity are assigned both three letter and one letter abbreviations. In this table, you can locate an amino acid, its abbreviations, and the three nucleotide DNA and mRNA sequence(s) that code for it.

Properly speaking, there are far more amino acids than are listed here (these are coded for directly in DNA; others are not), and one of the "amino" acids (proline) is chemically an "imino" acid, but that is outside the scope of this brief overview. For much more detailed information, consider reading Amino Acids and Peptides by Barrett and Elmore.

Clicking the amino acid names will cause their line structures to appear at the bottom of the page. Side-chains are shown in red. We are working on making the structures appear wherever your mouse is, but right now this is all that we have.

To convert DNA or RNA sequences into proteins, you can use ION's nucleotide sequence converter.

*: Asparagine and aspartic acid are sometimes used interchangeably. In this case, the variable is denoted Asx or B.

**: Glutamine and glutamic acid are sometimes used interchangeably. In this case, the variable is denoted Glx or Z.

Author: C. Shultz