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The Structure And Function Of Proteins And Enzymes Essay

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How does the structure and function of proteins and enzymes relate to each other?

A protein has multiple existing structures, these are the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structures which occur progressively. A protein is essentially a sequence of amino acids which are bonded adjacently, and interact with one another in various ways depending on the R group that the amino acid contains. There are 20 different amino acids which are able to be arranged in any given order, thus giving rise to a potential 2.433x1018 (4.s.f) different combinations, and therefore interactions between the various amino acids.
Prior to the determination of the primary structure, the RNA strand undergoes splicing which alters the sequence. During splicing introns are removed and exons are randomly re-arranged in a random order. There is 2 problems with this model of attempting to estimate the protein a sequence will form from RNA. Firstly depending on the place of the body at which splicing is occurring, different introns will be removed and also secondly, we need to know which random order the exons will shuffle themselves into.
The various interactions which can occur include the following:
1) Hydrogen Bonds – These arise between the R-CO-R and the R-NH-R, and increase the boiling point of the structure of the enzyme as more energy is required to break the intermolecular bonds. This means that the enzyme can function at a higher than normal temperature.
2) Disulphide bridges – These

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