Amino Acids

[UltimateHombre]

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Hey friends! I have been lightly studying for the DAT for the past couple months, but it is now time to really get to business. I am following DW's plan w/ Chads Videos. Just wanted to say thanks in advance for your help.

Is it necessary to memorize the structure of all the amino acids? If not, which would be most helpful?

 

[Ferferi]

Well I don't think so. I haven't taken DAT yet but I haven't faced with any sample questions asking for a particular amino acid structure. IMO the only thing you should know is that proline is the only amino acid which contains Hydrogen in its R group thus it has no optical activity.

 

[Saiph]

It is not proline that has no chirality center. It is Glycine.

 

[Ferferi]

Hahaha
I'm horrible
That's right.
I was thinking about proline at that moment I guess 😀

 

[TheDentist16]

Hey friends! I have been lightly studying for the DAT for the past couple months, but it is now time to really get to business. I am following DW's plan w/ Chads Videos. Just wanted to say thanks in advance for your help.

Is it necessary to memorize the structure of all the amino acids? If not, which would be most helpful?

No need to memorize any amino acid structures 🙂. This isn't a biochemistry class, it's the DAT! And as the first poster said, knowing that glycine has hydrogen as its R group is a useful piece of knowledge. Except for that, you don't need to memorize structures.

 

[Dotoday]

You must be able to ball park Pka values and for example carboxy group, (cooh) has a pka around 3 and Amino group (NH2) has a pka around 9.5. Know when they loose or gain a proton and know how to calculate the PI. You should be ok.

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

 

[UltimateHombre]

Thanks for all your replies. I will just prepare for a chirality question or the pKa values.