What type of interaction would you expect between the following in a tertiary structure?
a. threonine and glutamine

Question

What type of interaction would you expect between the following in a tertiary structure?

a. threonine and glutamine

Accepted Answer

All right. Hello everyone. So this question is asking us what specific kind of interaction it can be expected between alanine and veen within the internal structure of a folded protein. Option. A says ionic bond option B says hydrogen bond option C says hydrophobic interaction and option D says covalent bond. So recall first and foremost that interactions between amino acids are heavily dependent on their side chains. In other words, the polarity of their side chain is going to influence how they interact with similar amino acids, Alaine and vain for example, are characterized by their nonpolar side chains. They're hydrocarbon side chains. So let's go through the answer choices and talk about which amino acids are expected to you to participate in the following interactions starting off with the ionic bond. So an ionic bond if you recall is going to take place between one acidic amino acid and one basic amino acid. This is because one is going to have a negative charge and the other is going to have a positive charge that are going to interact. Acidic amino acids include aspartic acid and glutamic acid. While basic amino acids include lysine arginine and histidine moving on now to option B which is the hydrogen bond. Recall that hydrogen bonds are characteristic of polar r groups, but it's only a certain type of polar art group that's capable of a hydrogen bond because recall that a hydrogen bond is a bond between a hydrogen that's connecting to an electron element and a separate electron element. So if we take for example, the interaction between a hydroxy group or two hydroxy groups, I should say, then the hydrogen that's connecting to one oxygen is going to interact with the other oxygen, that's a hydrogen bond. So amino acids like for example, Cine thine and tyrosine are capable of h bonds and they all happen to have hydroxy groups. From here, we can talk about hydrophobic interactions which are characteristic of nonpolar or hydrophobic are groups of amino acids. Last but not least we can talk about a covalent bond. Now, in the context of amino acids and protein folding, the only covalent bond that we really study is the disulfide bond and the disulfide bond is characteristically occurring between cysteine residues. So, alanine and vein are not involved in a covalent bond because they don't participate in the disulfide bridge. However, as mentioned before, they are both nonpolar amino acids and therefore, they do participate in hydrophobic interactions. Meaning option C is correct. But in addition to all of these types of interactions, we can't forget about polar interactions or polar bonds. So a polar bond described simply is the interaction between polar R groups. More specifically, we're talking about side chains that have hetero atoms between them or in them. But with that being said, option C is our correct answer. Thank you so very much for watching and I hope you found this helpful.

What type of interaction would you expect between the following in a tertiary structure?
a. threonine and glutamine

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Amino Acid Properties

Hydrogen Bonding

Tertiary Structure of Proteins

What type of interaction would you expect between the following in a tertiary structure?a. threonine and glutamine

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Amino Acid Properties

Hydrogen Bonding

Tertiary Structure of Proteins

What type of interaction would you expect between the following in a tertiary structure?
a. threonine and glutamine