User:Karsten Theis/Trypsin

From Proteopedia

This is a lesson on Trypsin, a serine protease. It assumes you already know how chymotrypsin, another serine protease, works. It explores substrate specificity, activation and degradation, and relationship to thrombin.

By the end of this brief session, students will be able to:

• Explain how substrate specificity in trypsin is achieved, emphasizing the role of Asp189 in recognizing and binding positively charged residues like Arg and Lys.

• Compare the substrate-binding pockets of trypsin and chymotrypsin, noting how differences in residue composition drive specificity.

• Describe the biological importance of regulating trypsin activation and degradation, considering the fact that a significant portion of amino acids in the gut come from digestive enzymes themselves.

• Recognize the historical and structural relevance of trypsin as a model for thrombin, and appreciate how this influenced early biochemical and structural studies.

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