One of the characteristics of any species is the percent of the nucleotides that are A and T nucleotides. Return BACK to this text. Then drag over the entire sequence and COPY it. Return BACK to this text. The nucleotide sequence of the gene of DNA is the blueprint the cell uses to make the proteins.
Amino acids are the materials the cell actually uses for the building of the protein.
In this module, we will use the letters of the alphabet to represent the amino acids all species used to build all their proteins. The bottom of a Web site chart of amino acids shows the real names of the amino acids represented by each letter. Like the different arrangement of nucleotide beads on the double-stranded DNA necklaces had different characters, so different arrangements of amino acid links in the protein chain have different characters. The different sequences of amino acids in the chain give the proteins different properties. Some proteins become enzymes which speed up chemical reactions.