How can a cell make many different kinds of protein out of only 20 amino acid?

Answer 1

mlamb has the best analogy. it's exactly how you can get so many words from just 26 letters:

by stringing different number of amino acids in various orders to get different proteins, just like we do words

Answer 2

properly, maximum proteins are tens of hundreds of Amino Acids in length. those 20 all have different chemical residences that lead them to pull the strand of amino acids in different guidelines, some faraway from water, some in the direction of water, others in, out, and around, nevertheless others respond to pH. it relatively is the merely precise conformation of the protein, merely as a lot by using fact the amino acids it relatively is made up of, that make certain a protein's function. The cellular is steered via regulatory molecules around its DNA to supply proteins. enable's say that a cellular produces compound A. each and every time there is alot of compound A, a number of it gets back into the nucleus and binds with a regulatory "provide up" molecule, receptor A. Then the cellular will provide up making extra compound A by using fact it is familiar with that it has sufficient. each and every time there is far less compound A, there is merely no longer any sure to receptor A, and it will proceed to supply compound A till a number of it back binds with the provide up molecule. different cases, a gene may be activated if there is too a lot of something. as an occasion, enable's say a cellular absorbs alot of compound B. a number of it relatively is going to bind with a "initiate" molecule, receptor B. In reaction, the cellular will then produce alot of enzyme C to break down compound B. at last, there will be so little compound B that it extremely is no longer sure to receptor B, and so the cellular will provide up making enzyme C. and that's how a cellular "is familiar with" what proteins to make. generally, the extremely pathways are a lot extra complicated, yet those examples exhibit the needed areas of the approach.

Answer 3

Even though proteins can contain a small number of residues (amino acids), each part of the sequence has twenty possibilities. Also, even if two amino acid sequences contain the same residues, just by placing two of them in different spots can change the secondary structure (from alpha to beta for example).

Answer 4

Amino acids are like an alphabet. The amino acids bond together to form codons, which are like words with three amino acid "letters". Some arrangements of amino acids would not spell anything, while others are arranged in groups of three called codons. These codons spell out "words". Large chains of codons in a certain sequence make proteins, which are like sentences.

Answer 5

it's a probability type thing

Say we just have 3 amino acids

Call them 1, 2, 3
Arranged in a different order, we would have 6 possibilities:
1,2,3
2,1,3
1,3,2
2,3,1
3,1,2
3,2,1
That's if you don't repeat them. if you could repeat them, there would be 27 possiblities just from these 3....but it goes on from there, maybe the chain is longer than three spots, then you would be multiplying by 3 for every link in the chain...

etc....you get the idea.

Answer 6

By stringing them together in various orders. With two acids, you can do 400 different proteins, with 3, 8,000, and so on.

Answer 7

By pairing the different codes it will produce lots od different proteins,as the nRNA copies the code from the nucleus of the cell to the ribosomes...

Answer 8

Exactly the same way you get many different words out of only 26 letters.

Answer 9

Read the chapter. It's IN THERE!