How to Memorize the Amino Acids Without Mnemonics I: Introduction

[This is the first post in a multi-part series.  I’m not sure how many parts it will be yet, but it will tentatively be four parts.  This part is the introduction. The second part covers glycine, alanine, serine, cysteine, threonine, and proline, with a recurring theme of stereochemistry.  The third part will cover phenylalanine, tyrosine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, and tryptophan.  The fourth part will cover histidine, lysine, arginine, aspartate, asparigine, glutamate, and glutamine.  After I publish the later parts, I will update the contents of these brackets accordingly.]

Memorizing Without Mnemonics

Q:  How can you memorize the amino acids without mnemonics?

A:  By encountering lots of interesting information about them, in the form of a narrative.

Analogy:  When you read a novel, you memorize the characters and their characteristics.  This is because you encounter a lot of interesting information about them, in the form of a narrative.

Note:  You don’t have to memorize this interesting information to memorize the amino acids, you just have to encounter it.  In general, the information you encounter will always be more detailed than the information you remember.

In this post, I will present lots of interesting information about the amino acids, in the form of a narrative, in order to help you memorize them.  I will choose information that I think is interesting, which can be idiosyncratic at times.  (I happen to think nomenclature and etymology is very interesting, but synthesis not so interesting.  (I don’t find the kind of synthesis that chemists do very interesting.  I do, however, find biosynthesis and prebiotic synthesis very interesting.))

Why this could work:  Encountering information about the amino acids forces you to think about them.  When you think about them, you keep them in your mind, i.e. you remember them, for the duration of time that you are thinking about them.  If this information is interesting to you, then you will probably think about it again later, after you read it, and this will give your mind even more practice remembering the amino acids.  If the information here is not interesting to you, then it won’t have this benefit, but it may still help you find other information that is.  Why must the information be in the form of a narrative?  Because we think in narratives.  Narratives connect information together so that if we forget one part, we can retrieve it from the other parts.  The information about each amino acid will refer not just to that amino acid, but to others as well, in order to connect them in your mind.

Why mnemonics wouldn’t work as well:  A mnemonic is fake, made-up information about something.  Just like real information, a mnemonic about the amino acids would make you think about them, and thus it would help you remember them.  However, this information wouldn’t be as interesting as real information, and it would apply exclusively to the amino acids. The real information contained here applies far beyond the amino acids.  It will help you memorize other things in biology and chemistry that you may want to memorize in the future.  And it will connect these later things to the amino acids, so that they too will help you remember the amino acids.  In general, things get easier to memorize as you learn more in a certain field, provided you memorize them based on real information rather than mnemonics.

When learning, we try to build a large, well-connected network of ideas in our mind.  An idea that is just based on a mnemonic is a miser that doesn’t participate in this network.  Not giving any support to other ideas, the other ideas reciprocate by not supporting it.

Why school doesn’t do this:  In school, students are basically handed a list of the amino acids and their properties and asked to memorize it.  This is because the logic of school dictates that every morsel of information you encounter should be memorized well enough to answer questions on it.  To do the approach here, it is necessary that you encounter a lot of information that you don’t memorize and won’t be able to answer questions on.

Another note:  Just because you are not going to remember the information here doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think through it fully.  In fact, you won’t really “encounter” it unless you think through it.  The difference between memorizing and encountering is obscured by school, which would have us believe that we haven’t actually encountered information unless we can pass a test on it.

Why Memorize the Amino Acids?

One might claim that it’s more important to simply know stuff about the amino acids, and that it doesn’t really matter too much if you have their structures and properties thoroughly memorized.  I agree that knowing stuff about them is preferable to the sterile type of memorization done in school.  However, if you correctly memorize them, assisted by your knowledge of them, you will have the essential building blocks of life on Earth at your disposal, whenever you might want to think about them!  Furthermore, the amino acids are an essential part of the vocabulary of biology and chemistry, and you will be able to read in these fields a lot more fluently if you have them memorized.

In the Next Part of this series…

I will actually start giving interesting information about the amino acids, in the form of a narrative.  I will cover the first 6 amino acids: glycine, alanine, serine, cysteine, threonine, and proline.

Continue to part II…