Proteans

Proteins are like tiny little machines in our bodies that do a lot of important jobs. They’re made up of “building blocks” called amino acids. Think of amino acids like legos – when you put them together in different ways, you can create all sorts of different structures.

Some proteins are long and thin, like spaghetti, while others are more compact and round like a ball. Different shapes means different jobs! For example, one type of protein helps carry oxygen around our bodies, while another helps us digest the food we eat.

Now, when we talk about “proteans,” we might be talking about something different. Sometimes people use the word “protean” to mean something that’s really adaptable and can take on many different forms. So you could say that proteins are protean because they have many different shapes and functions depending on where they are in the body and what they need to do. Pretty cool, huh?