https://pages.htgaa.org/2026a/andrei-vasilan/homework/week-04-homework-protein-design-part1/index.htmlHomework 4: Protein design part 1: Part A: How many molecules of amino acids do you take with a piece of 500 grams of meat? (on average an amino acid is ~100 Daltons) 500g of meat => ~25% grams of protein => 125g of protein 125g of protein / 100 g per mole amino acids = 1.25 moles of AAs Nr of amino acids: 6.022 * 1023 * 1.25 = 7.5275 * 1023 amino acids in 500g of meat; Why do humans eat beef but do not become a cow, eat fish but do not become fish? What does it even mean to become a cow??? To act like a cow? To look like a cow? Both? I guess it means that your genome is indistinguishable from the one of a cow. Everything that you ingest is broken down into the monomers of that thing (or very close), because otherwise your cells will struggle to obtain the nutrients that they need. The nutrients present in a cow are the same as the ones found in humans..so it’s not the molecules that make us what we are, but the way they are arranged and function in our organism. Cells do not invent new genes or proteins (only accidentally). They use the nutrients to follow the instructions already present in them. In conclusion, to become a cow, you would need to rewrite your genome, and we can’t do that JUST by eating cows. Why are there only 20 natural amino acids? Why would there be more than 20 alpha-AAs? Life found a way to work with those 20 amino acids, adding a new amino acid means increasing complexity and causing a lot of new structural problems. “The simpler, the better” - it applies to any system, because it minimizes problems. There aren’t just 20 “standard amino acids” because it is physically impossible for life to exist in any other way, there are only 20 because it worked.Hugoen