Aspartame, molecular model sweetness

In fact, the very name of glycine comes from the greek word for sweet (yXoKocr). Figure 1 shows the molecular models of glycine and of I -tryptophan, the sweetest of R amino acids. In addition to simple amino acids, there are several sweet peptides most of them, although composed of natural amino acidic residues, are not natural and are related to aspartame, 1-aspartylphenylalanine methyl ester, the first sweet dipeptide, discovered... 

FIGURE 4 Three of the most popular indirect models of the active site of the sweet taste receptor. (A) Main contour ofthe active site proposed by Temussi and coworkers (Kamphuis et al., 1992 Temussi et al., 1978,1984,1991), hosting a molecular model of aspartame in an extended conformation. (B) A topological model, developed by Goodman et al. (1987). The L -shaped model and an L -shaped conformation of aspartame are superimposed. The hydrophobic side chain of Phe is denoted X, since it corresponds to the Kier s dispersion point. (C) 3D model of an idealized sweetener proposed by Tinti and Nofre (1991). Besides the AH-B entity, the model has six additional interaction points connected by a complex network of distances. 

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