Amino Acids

The general structure of an amino acid molecule, with the amine group on the left and the carboxylic acid group on the right. The R group is dependent on the amino acid. In chemistry, an amino acid is any molecule that contains both amine and carboxylic acid functional groups. In biochemistry, this shorter and more general term is frequently used to refer to alpha amino acids: those amino acids in which the amino and carboxylate functionalities are attached to the same carbon, the so-c ...