| Arginine is an amino acid containing extra nitrogen which makes it very basic.
Like all amino acids, it has an amino group (-NH2) - blue with 2 white balls - at one end, and a carboxylic acid group (-COOH) - grey, connected to red, and red and white - at the other end. These groups are used to link onto other amino acids by peptide bonds. Between these is the a- (alpha) carbon to which the 'R' group is attached. Its 'R' group is -(CH2)3-NH-CNH-NH2, so it contains 3 nitrogen atoms (blue) at the other end of the molecule.
Other informationArginine has 3 extra nitrogen containing groups in its R group, so it has extra basic characteristics. These do not enter into peptide bonds but may ionise and interact with other R groups in the polypeptide chain.You can move this molecule in 3 dimensions by holding down the left button and dragging using the mouse. If you have a central mouse wheel you can usually zoom the image in/out. Right clicking gives a variety of display options. Simply leaving the mouse pointer over one of the atoms will give information about it; the atom symbol, and some other less useful numerical information. |
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