Answer – A polymer of amino acids is a polypeptide, or a protein.
Explanation:
Monomers are simple (usually organic) molecules that react with one another to form long chains of molecules called polymers.
Amino acids are monomers. They react with each other at specific binding sites to form long chains of molecules called polypeptides. Each such polypeptide could be a protein on its own or combine with other polypeptides to form one. Thus, both may be considered polymers of amino acids since they are made of several monomeric amino acid molecules.
There are 20 different types of amino acids that combine to form polypeptides or proteins. Each one of the 20, however, has the same base structure: a central carbon atom attached to an amino (NH₂) group, a hydrogen atom, a carboxyl (COOH) group, and a side chain. The side chain, represented by R, varies in each type of amino acid, resulting in different chemical behavior.
When two amino acids react, a peptide bond is formed through a biochemical reaction called dehydration synthesis. In this reaction, the COOH group of one amino acid gets linked to the NH₂ group of another amino acid, resulting in the release of a molecule of water and the formation of a covalent peptide bond. When several such peptide bonds are formed, it leads to a chain of amino acids, which is the primary structure of a protein.
This primary structure further undergoes folding in specific patterns to lead to the protein’s secondary structure. Multiple such folds then arrange themselves as a chain of amino acids forming the tertiary structure of the protein, which is also known as a polypeptide chain. Finally, several such polypeptide chains come together to form the quaternary structure of the protein, which is its commonly known three-dimensional functional structure.
