Since starting biochemistry in January I have learned a lot of new and interesting things. And with this I have also been able to make connections with previous things that I have learned in various science courses. A small example would be when going over amino acids we touched upon how tryptophan makes a person tired and how dopamine will give a person an energy boost but I had never understood why. Well I found out that tryptophan and dopamine are both chemical precursors and that tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin which explains the sleepiness and dopamine is a precursor to adrenaline which explains the energy boost.
Another topic that we touched on protein structure and the four types of structural components (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary) and there roles in the protein. For example I knew from previous courses that these are very important and that the structures found in these components are very important in determining the protein. But i did not know that this overall structure depends on the proteins function and that one small substitution can completely change a protein for good or for bad. It seems that changes on such a small level would not be very important yet in the overall picture of the organism it is extremely important.
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