They are the building blocks for proteins, biology’s workhorse macromolecules that provide structure and function in all organisms. Why 20 and not 10 or 30? And why those particular 20? Over the last few decades, the passionate chemists and molecular biologists who can’t leave these questions alone have started piecing together some convincing explanations.įrom alanine (A) to tyrosine (Y), 20 ‘proteinogenic’ amino acids, each abbreviated to a different initial, make up the alphabet soup of life. One fundamental question is why life is based on a set 20 amino acids. How chemistry could have brought us to complex life poses many open questions. But understanding evolution at the chemical level is their passion, even when funding is sparse. For many researchers, studying the chemical origins of life is a side project – it’s what they do in between their grant-funded work on the causes and cure of human disease.
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