ABSTRACT
Polymeric chains of amino acids are peptides, and proteins are poly(peptides). Proteins are essential to living systems and the critically important proteins called enzymes catalyze processes that are essential to life. This chapter discusses peptides, their characteristics and how they are formed. It discusses the structure and function of proteins. Amino acids undergo several important reactions that are dominated by the amine group and/or the carboxyl group. The fact that the amine and the carboxyl react with each other complicates things, because one functional group will influence the reactivity of the other. The reactions of amino acids are relatively normal with respect to the amine and the carboxyl unit, if the presence of both functional groups in the same molecule is taken into account. Several methods are used for the synthesis of amino acids.
