The analogy in the short video assigned for this week comparing amino acids to words and proteins to paragraphs really helped me understand the differences in primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structures. As we learned in class, there are many different R groups that differentiate amino acids. This variable is similar to the 27 letters in the alphabet. However, as the video points out, you don’t think of random letters you think of words and then the letters that compose them. Similarly, our DNA codes for certain orders of amino acids that are read and used in different ways.
Primary structure is the order of amino acids in a protein, which is similar to the order of words in a sentence. Like a sentence, you read chains of amino acids or peptides in a certain order—from the N terminus or the capital letter to the C terminus or the period.
Secondary structure is a repetitive three dimensional structure of a protein which is analogous multiple sentences following each other in a chain expressing the same thought or working towards the same goal. The video continues the analogy to quaternary structure or paragraphs built of words and sentences.
What I found interesting and have been thinking about is how the video neglects to draw an analogy between the three different types of protein secondary structures, alpha helices, beta sheets and random coils to something similar with writing. I’m not entirely sure one exists because in English we string words together to follow certain grammatical rules. Perhaps an analogy would be to different grammatical structures that are found in other languages? I’m not totally sure about this and would like some input—I’m interested to see if this kind of analogy can pan out further or if it is limited to what is included in the video we watched.