Posttranslational modification

Imagine you have friends who love to play dress-up! They're always playing with different clothes and accessories to make themselves look different. In a way, that's what happens to proteins inside your body after they are made.

Proteins are made up of building blocks called amino acids. They are like letters in the alphabet, and they come together to spell out different words - in this case, the words are the proteins that make up your body.

After these words are spelled out, they often get dressed up a little more through a process called posttranslational modification. It's like adding extra decorations or accessories to the protein dress-up game.

Sometimes, tiny chemical groups get added to the amino acids in the protein word. These groups can include things like phosphates or sugars, and they can change the protein's shape or activity. This can be super important, because different shapes and activities can help the protein do its job better, like acting as enzymes or helping with signaling inside the cell.

Other times, parts of the protein word get cut off or added on. These parts could be like the accessories in the dress-up game - they could help the protein interact with other molecules or move to different parts of the cell.

All these little changes to the protein word can happen after it's made, so they're called posttranslational modifications. Just like your friends love to play dress-up and add all sorts of fun extras, proteins in your body can get dressed up in many different ways to help them do their jobs better.