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Counting integral numbers of amino groups per polypeptide chain
Author(s) -
Hollecker Michelle,
Creighton Thomas E.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(80)81027-1
Subject(s) - citation , library science , physics , mathematics , combinatorics , computer science
Proteins have integral numbers of each of the 20 amino acids, but all the currently accepted methods of determining this number measure only a nonintegral ratio of moles of ammo acid per mole of protein. This value is rarely found to be close to an integer, due to experimental error and uncertainty about the molecular weight of the protein. An alternative method which gives correct integral values was demonstrated recently for cysteine residues [ 11; a very similar procedure had been proposed earlier [2,3]. The procedure is independent of any other information about the protein, including its molecular weight. Here we demonstrate a related procedure for counting the integral number of ammo groups, which gives the number of lysine residues plus the o-amino group.