Understanding the structural and molecular interactions that induce shape and function for a protein has been an obstacle for some of your students. You decide to plan a lesson to introduce them to the basic amino acid structure and then use that concept to introduce the different levels of protein structure. To reinforce your lesson on amino acids, you need to aid the students in understanding that most naturally occurring amino acids have a shared base structure. Each amino acid has an amine group, an alpha-carbon (or central carbon), an R-side group, and a carboxyl group. The R-side group is what gives each amino acid its distinctive characteristics--for example, whether the amino acid will be acidic or basic, hydrophilic or hydrophobic, or charged.