After two German chemists,\u00a0Emil Fischer\u00a0and\u00a0Franz Hofmeister, independently stated in 1902 that proteins are essentially polypeptides consisting of many\u00a0amino acids, an attempt was made to classify proteins according to their chemical and physical properties, because the biological function of proteins had not yet been established. (The protein character of\u00a0enzymes was not proved until the 1920s.) Proteins were classified primarily according to their solubility in a number of\u00a0solvents. This classification is no longer satisfactory, however, because proteins of quite different structure and function sometimes have similar solubilities; conversely, proteins of the same function and similar structure sometimes have different solubilities. The terms associated with the old classification, however, are still widely used. They are defined below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Albumins\u00a0are proteins that are soluble in\u00a0water\u00a0and in water half-saturated with ammonium sulfate. On the other hand,\u00a0globulins\u00a0are salted out (i.e., precipitated) by half-saturation with ammonium sulfate. Globulins that are soluble in salt-free water are called pseudoglobulins; those insoluble in salt-free water are euglobulins. Both prolamins and glutelins, which are\u00a0plant\u00a0proteins, are insoluble in water; the prolamins\u00a0dissolve\u00a0in 50 to 80 percent\u00a0ethanol, the glutelins in acidified or alkaline solution. The term\u00a0protamine<\/em>\u00a0is used for a number of proteins in fish sperm that consist of approximately 80 percent\u00a0arginine\u00a0and therefore are strongly alkaline.\u00a0Histones, which are less alkaline, apparently occur only in\u00a0cell\u00a0nuclei, where they are bound to\u00a0nucleic acids. The term\u00a0scleroproteins\u00a0has been used for the insoluble proteins of animal organs. They include\u00a0keratin, the insoluble protein of certain epithelial tissues such as the skin or hair, and\u00a0collagen, the protein of the\u00a0connective tissue. A large group of proteins has been called\u00a0conjugated proteins, because they are complex molecules of protein consisting of protein and nonprotein moieties. The nonprotein portion is called the prosthetic group.\u00a0Conjugated\u00a0proteins can be subdivided into mucoproteins, which, in addition to protein, contain carbohydrate;\u00a0lipoproteins, which contain lipids; phosphoproteins, which are rich in phosphate; chromoproteins, which contain pigments such as iron-porphyrins,\u00a0carotenoids, bile pigments, and\u00a0melanin; and finally, nucleoproteins, which contain nucleic acid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The weakness of the above classification lies in the fact that many, if not all, globulins contain small amounts of carbohydrate; thus there is no sharp borderline between globulins and mucoproteins. Moreover, the phosphoproteins do not have a prosthetic group that can be isolated; they are merely proteins in which some of the hydroxyl groups of\u00a0serine\u00a0are phosphorylated (i.e., contain phosphate). Finally, the globulins include proteins with quite different roles\u2014enzymes,\u00a0antibodies, fibrous proteins, and contractile proteins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Classification by solubility After two German chemists,\u00a0Emil Fischer\u00a0and\u00a0Franz Hofmeister, independently stated in 1902 that proteins are essentially polypeptides consisting of many\u00a0amino acids, an attempt was made to classify proteins according to their chemical and physical properties, because the biological function of proteins had not yet been established. (The protein character of\u00a0enzymes was not proved until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"Cooking_time":"","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1998,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/1998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}