Prescription: Issue No. 2 (February 2024)

The girls were almost singing the tune ‘ABCDEFG, HIJKLMN, OPQRSTU, VWXYZ’ in the standard Sesame Street melody. The teaching-enhanced classroom (TEC) was comfortable with appropriate lighting, air conditioning, and a projector, though the outside temperature in the afternoon of mid-May 2023 might reach 35'C. The pharmaceutical chemistry lecturer wrote the alphabet on the board in good order and reminded the students about ‘BJOUXZ’.
These six letters do not represent the one-letter acronym for the twenty natural amino acids. When the class reached the letter ‘E’, they were reminded of alpha (α)-glutamic acid (Glu). Subsequent questions on the tutorial sheet tested the students’ knowledge of glutamic acid’s structure, as well as their understanding of the amide functional group and dipeptide linkage. This chemical bonding is involved in the construction of the amino acid polymer, called poly-gamma (γ)-glutamic acid (γ-PGA).