Structures of Amino Acids

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Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. There are 300 amino acids that occur in nature. Among these only 20 are known as standard amino acids that commonly occur in proteins. Amino acids contain two functional groups. They are - amino and carboxyl groups. The amino group (-NH₂) is basic and the carboxyl group (-COOH) is acidic in nature.

General structure

The carboxyl group and amino group are attached to the same carbon atom, hence amino acids are termed as -amino acids.

a-amino acid