Proteins are made up of long chains of amino acids and are the primary material of life. The 20 types of amino acids that make up proteins can be synthesized within the body from fats and carbohydrates, except for 8 essential amino acids that must be obtained through diet. Scientists determine protein structures using methods like X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to analyze a protein's primary structure of amino acid sequence, secondary structures like alpha helices and beta sheets, tertiary folded 3D structure, and possible quaternary structure involving multiple protein chains.

1. Proteins:

2. What is protein And Why is it consider
to be “of prime importance?”
• Protein are very large molecule made of long strings of Amino Acids.
• They’re consider to be “of prime importance” because they’re the
primary material of life. Everything you see is Protein: Skin, eyeballs,
and fingernails. Even some of the clothes your classmate is wearing
may be proteins. Your bone and organ also contain Proteins.

3. What are the building
blocks of proteins?
And what do proteins
look like?
The buildings blocks of Proteins are smaller
molecules called Amino Acids.
They look like chains:
• Proteins are made of long strands of small molecules
called amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids
in nature, and each protein contains a unique
combination of a few dozen to many thousands of
them. Some proteins are made up of multiple amino
acid strands that wind together in the completed
protein.

4. What if we don’t eat any Protein:
can the body make Protein from
and fat?
Not totally. Fat and sugar can only be converted into some Amino Acids.
The Amino Acids the body can not synthesize, and that therefore have
to be eaten, are called essential Amino Acids. Of 20 different Amino
Acids, we can synthesize only 12 from fat and carbohydrates, leaving 8
essential Amino Acids.

5. How do scientists determine
protein structures?
The two most common methods for determining protein structures are X-ray
crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. A third
method, curio-electron microscopy, is also used to determine the shapes of
large structures like molecular complexes (groups of proteins that combine and
function as a unit), viruses or organelles.

6. Structure of Protein
Structural features of proteins are usually described at
four levels of complexity:
Primary structure: the linear arrangement of amino acids in a protein and
the location of covalent linkages such as disulfide bonds between amino
acids.
•Secondary structure: areas of folding or coiling within a protein; examples
include alpha helices and pleated sheets, which are stabilized by hydrogen
bonding.
•Tertiary structure: the final three-dimensional structure of a protein, which
results from a large number of non-covalent interactions between amino
acids.
•Quaternary structure: non-covalent interactions that bind multiple
polypeptides into a single, larger protein. Hemoglobin has quaternary
structure due to association of two alpha globin and two beta globin
polyproteins.