[mir]

I am hunting for an easy way to remember all the 20 most common amino acids, and maybe the groupmembers too. I also want to find how to keep the one-letter code in mind. So far I have found:

GLAMVIP
And easy way to remember the five nonpolar AA with aliphatic sidechain:
Glucine, Leucine, Alanine (ala9), Methionine (Methio9), Valine (Va-), Isoleucine, Proline (Pro-).

But...

FYW
The nonpolar aromatic AA's have all Y's and two of them got an T.

STCNQ
KHR
DE

Proves more difficult, any suggestions?

I have also made a Java-program for those who are interested in learning the abbrevations. It is listed on this site:
http://mir.humle.be/java-programs/
I havent been able to make an *.exe file out of it, so you need to know how to execute the *.java file.

[Yggdrasil]

FYW
The nonpolar aromatic AA's have all Y's and two of them got an T.

I remember the aromatics because they spell fwy (the abbreviation for freeway).  Once you know that fwy are the aromatics, they should be easier to remember.

Tyrosine
Tryptophan (pronnounced twiptophan w/ a slight lisp)
Phenylalanine (pronounced fenylalanine)

STC

These should be fairly simple.  Serine is the only aa that starts with S, cysteine is the only amino acid that starts with C, and threonine is one of the only two that begins with T.  (also if you draw out threonine, the side chain makes a t-like structure [although its closer to a y]).

KHR

Histadine is the only aa that starts with H
Lysine begins with lyse which means to kill
Arginine is pronounced with an R sound first

DE
NQ

Aspartate is one carbon shorter that glutamate and its abbreviation also comes before glutamate's.  The same applies to the amide versions of these amino acids (asparagine and glutamine).  I don't have a good way of remembering that DENQ represent the carboxylic acids and their derrivatives, though.  (however, I remember N because you are adding a nitrogen-based group [an amine] to aspartate to make asparagine).

As for specifically remembering the grouping, I had to memorize the structures at the same time as all of the abbreviations and such, so all I had to do was remember the structure and it was easy to group the aa's based on the structure.

[enahs]

http://www.wiley.com/legacy/college/boyer/0470003790/animations/acideroids/acideroids.htm
http://www.mcb.arizona.edu/bruce/HangTwenty.html

Heh, that is what I used to help when I took BioChemistry.


And I would print out something like this, and just go to town.
http://courses.cm.utexas.edu/jrobertus/ch339k/overheads-1/ch5-amino-acids.jpg