Word: amino
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Proteins are enormously complicated molecules, and until Sanger's work on insulin, no one had ever been able to determine the structure of even the simplest of them. Chemists have known for many years that protein molecules are made of amino acids (nitrogen-containing organic acids) strung together in long chains or cables. By various kinds of rough treatment, the chemists could separate and count the amino acid building blocks. But this did not reveal their structural plan...
...Sanger tried treating the insulin molecule gently, succeeded in breaking it into large chunks. He separated the fragments and labeled the amino acids on their ends by making them combine with a material called DNP (for dinitropheny). When he broke the fragments into smaller fragments, the amino acids that had been in the end positions were stained yellow with DNP. There are 51 amino acid units in insulin, a comparatively simple protein. But Sanger's patience and skill eventually found the place of each in the long chain. Then he reassembled the fragments and learned how the chain...
...sprouted hopefully but did not grow. These were the interesting spores. They acted as if they were trying to grow, but needed something that they could not get from the agar or produce for themselves. So when a microscope showed such a spore, it was tenderly fed with vitamins, amino acids and other growth-fostering chemicals in hope of making it perk up and grow normally...
Different kinds of rocks and different geologic processes up to continent formation follow, and after them comes an examination of how key biochemical compounds, like carbohydrates, hydrocarbons, amino acids, and proteins are formed...
...school year, they had ground five varieties of fruit in a blender, whirled the fruit mixed with pure ethyl alcohol in a centrifuge to separate the solid matter, run the remaining solution through ion exchange columns to remove the salts, and then removed the water to isolate the pure amino acid extract. This year's group of five students will start to identify the acids. Silber pays his boys and girls 35? an hour ("enough for bus fare and supper money, but not enough to make the project a job"), often has to shoo them...