The Biology Project > Biochemistry > The Chemistry of Amino Acids

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Glutamine Q (Gln)

Chemical Properties:     Neutral (Amides of acidic amino acids R-group)	Physical Properties:    Polar (uncharged)
Glutamine is the amide of glutamic acid, and is uncharged under all biological conditions. The additional single methylene group in the side chain relative to asparagine allows glutamine in the free form or as the N-terminus of proteins to spontaneously cyclize and deamidate yielding the six-membered ring structure pyrrolidone carboxylic acid, which is found at the N-terminus of many immunoglobulin polypeptides. This causes obvious difficulties with amino acid sequence determination.

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The Biology Project > Biochemistry > The Chemistry of Amino Acids

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