• Question: what is the chemical formular for a protein?

    Asked by to Peter, Hannah on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      It is very tough to show this as a protein can be many hundreds of amino acids in length (amino acids being the building blocks of proteins).

      It is even difficult to do it at at amino acid level as there are 20 different types. So I shall give you the chemical formula an alanine amino acid as an example.

      C3H7NO2

      Is there a particular protein you were thinking of as I could tell you its chemical formula.

Comments

  • Photo: Bethany

    Bethany commented on :

    Just to generalise Peter’s answer, amino acids all have the same underlying structure: NH2CHRCOOH, where R has a chemical structure specific to the amino acid in question. If we compare this to the formula Peter gives for alanine, then we can work out that the alanine R group must be CH3.