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Amino acids are organic compounds that are predominantly made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Although there are hundreds of amino acids, there are twenty that function as building blocks of proteins. These twenty amino acids are often referred to by their three or one-letter abbreviations.

All amino acids have a central carbon called the alpha carbon, which functions as a chiral center for most amino acids. It is attached to an amino group, a carboxyl group, a hydrogen atom, and a variable R group.

A chiral molecule has four distinct groups arranged around a particular atom, known as the chiral center. As glycine has a hydrogen atom as its R group, it does not have four distinct groups and therefore does not have a chiral center.

These four groups can form two distinct configurations that are stereoisomers, called L and D isomers. These isomers are mirror images that are not superimposable on each other. Amino acids used in protein synthesis are always L-isomers.

The amine group on an amino acid can act as a base and accept a proton resulting in a positive charge, whereas the carboxyl group can act as an acid and donate a proton resulting in a negative charge. At phy