What is the relationship between amino acids and protein?
Body proteins are made up of 20 kinds of amino acids. About 500 kinds of amino acids have been discovered in nature. However, only 20 kinds serve as the constituents of our body proteins. Complicated combinations of these 20 kinds produce as many as one hundred thousand kinds of various proteins. When we eat food such as meat, fish, and cereals, the proteins contained in it are first degraded to the 20 kinds of amino acids, and then reassembled into proteins in the body.