I know that DNA encodes proteins. Truthfully, everything besides that (including ‘what are proteins’) mostly wooshes over my head, but that’s not relevant because whenever I search this question I never even find it addressed anywhere.
The human body has, among other things, two hands each with five fingers, with a very particular bone structure. How are things like that encoded in DNA, and by what mechanisms does that DNA cause these features to be built the way they are? What makes two people have a different nose shape? Nearly everyone in my family has a mole on the left side of their face, how does that come about from DNA?
I’m sure there are many steps involved, but I don’t see how we go from creating proteins to reproducibly building a full organism with all the organs in the right places and the right shapes. Whenever I try to look this up, all of these intermediate steps are missing, so it basically seems like magic.
As I said, any explanation will most likely go over my head and I won’t be able to understand it fully, but I at least want to see an explanation. I’ll do my best to understand it of course.
The R side chains are not referred to as radicals. R- is common in organic chemistry and refers to a part of a molecule not shown for some reason. Generally because it’s not the focus in the specific figure. Generally you’ll have a R = (whatever combination of atoms) defined below.
Radicals are a specific atom with an unpaired valence electron. Sometimes also called “free radicals”.
Edit, here’s an example of a non-amino acid use of R:
Fixed - thanks for pointing this out. My brain farted the word out of nowhere, the correct term in this context would be “side chain”.
I’m aware of the usage of R in org chem.
Sorry, I hope I didn’t come off as condescending or anything. Getting thoughts into words is difficult sometimes haha. But I just take any chance I can (there’s not too many) to talk about chemistry.
Your original post explained everything very well, thanks for contributing.
Don’t worry, you didn’t sound condescending - you went straight for the issue, and then added further info.
Completely off-topic: I’m curious on your example. Most benzopyrazine synthesis routes that I’ve seen use IBX instead of SSA. Is this a recent development?