"Alex Becket" <abecket at cinci.rr.com> wrote:
>I am a biochemistry student at the University of Cincinnati. I am doing a
>study of the relative hydrophobicities of amino acid side chains. My
>question is: does a larger surface area available to water increase or
>decrease an amino acid's hydrophobicity? For example, tryptophan has a
>larger surface area available to water than phenylalanine, yet phenylalanine
>is more hydrophobic (unless using long chain alcohols as the nonpolar
>phase).
Fort such comparisons, think of "normalized" (per surface area)
hydrophobicity. It's not just area, it's also nature of atoms occupying
it.
