Complete the amino acid abbreviation chart below from memory.

Question

Accepted Answer

So here's a pretty hefty practice problem that wants us to recall all of the amino acid abbreviations that we've learned thus far. And the directions say to complete the amino acid abbreviation chart below, from memory. And so just to keep things in the same order that we learned them, we're first gonna the chart with the 3 letter amino acid codes in these larger blanks that are throughout our chart. And then after we complete the chart with the 3 letter amino acid code, we'll switch over to the 1 letter amino acid code and complete the chart with the smaller blanks that are throughout our chart. And so recall with the 3 letter amino acid codes that there were only 4 amino acids with 3 letter codes of phonetic origin, and those were the 4 that we really wanted to spend most of our time committing the memory because once we memorize those 4, then memorizing all of the other 3 letter amino acid codes are gonna be super, super easy since they're literally just the first three letters of the amino acid itself. And so recall that we had a mnemonic to help us memorize the 4 amino acids with phonetic three letter codes, and that mnemonic is just asparagus or asparagine chillin' on 3 tropical islands. And so the 3 here helps us remember that this mnemonic is specifically for the phonetic three letter codes. And then we know from memory that ASN is for asparagine, GLN is for glutamine, TRP is for tryptophan, isoleucine. And so we can go ahead and apply that up above to our chart. Asparagine is ASN. Glutamine is GLN. Isoleucine is ILE. And tryptophan is TRP. And so now that we've completed those 4 amino acids with 3 letter codes of phonetic origin, all of the other amino acid three letter codes are super super easy because they're literally just the first three letters of the amino acid itself. And so for instance, alanine is, it's 3 letter code is going to be Ala, because that is its first three letters. Arginine will be Arg. Aspartic acid will be a s p. Cysteine will be c y s. Glutamic acid will be glu. Glycine, g l y. Histidine, l y, histidine, h I s, leucine, l e u, lysine, l y s, methionine, m e t, phenylalanine, p h e, proline, p r o, serine, s s e r, threonine, t h r, tyrosine, t y r, and valine, v a l. And so what you can see here is that most of these amino acids are super super easy to memorize, and the only ones that we really needed to commit to memory here are are gonna be the ones that are highlighted here in blue because those are the ones of phonetic origin that we really wanted to commit to memory. And all of the other ones are super super easy because it's literally just the first three letters of the amino acid itself. So no need to waste your time trying to memorize all of those other ones. Focus on the ones that are highlighted in blue and you guys will reduce your memory load by a lot. And so now that we've completed all of the 3 letter amino acid codes in our chart, we're gonna move on to our one letter amino acid codes. And recall with our one letter amino acid codes that there were 8 amino acids that had one letter amino acid codes of phonetic phonetic origin. And those were the ones that we really wanted to spend most of our time committing to memory because once we committed those 8 to memory, then memorizing all of the other letter codes are gonna be super super easy. And so, the mnemonic that helps us memorize the phonetic one letter codes is just nerdy, it's nerdy, w q f. And so we know that the, really this is standing for nerdy wqfqualifiesinfortnite. And so if you can remember nerdy WQF, you'll remember the 8 amino acids with one letter codes of phonetic origin. And so, we really want to take the time to commit these phonetic one letter codes to memory. And so, recall here that the n, in nerdy is specifically for asparagine. The e here is for glutamic acid. The r is specifically for arginine. The d is for aspartic acid, so here. The y is specifically for tyrosine. The w is for tryptophan or tryptophan. The q here is for glutamine, cutamine. And the f here is for phenylalanine, which is here. And so now that we've labeled all of these one letter codes here as the phonetic one letter codes, then we know that the remaining one letter codes are gonna be super, super easy because it's literally just the first letter of the amino acid or k for lysine. And so since k, is the unique amino acid code that is neither phonetic in origin nor the first letter of the amino acid, let's go ahead and put that in here. K for lysine. And all of the other one letter amino acid codes are literally gonna be just the first letter of the amino acid itself. So alanine will be a, cysteine will be c, glycine will be g, histidine, h, isoleucine, I, leucine, l, methionine, m, proline, p, serine s threonine t, and valine v. And so essentially here what we can see is that by focusing our memory specifically on these phonetic abbreviations that are down below, then we can reduce a lot of our memory load and that'll help us memorize these amino acids, abbreviations much much easier. And so we'll be able to get more practice utilizing all of these abbreviations as we move along through our course, and as we move along through our next set of practice problems. So, I'll see you guys in our next practice video.

Struggling with Biochemistry?

Complete the amino acid abbreviation chart below from memory.

Watch next

Amino Acid One Letter Code practice set