Molecular Biology Of The Cell 6th Edition by Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, David Morgan, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, Peter Walter

Exercise 14

2 At body temperature, L-aspartate in proteins race- mizes to D-aspartate at an appreciable rate. Most pro- teins in the body have a very low level of D-aspartate, if it can be detected at all. Elastin, however, has a fairly high level of D-aspartate. Moreover, the amount of D-aspartate increases in direct proportion to the age of the person from whom the sample was taken. Why do you suppose that most proteins have little if any D-aspartate, while elastin has levels of D-aspartate that increase steadily with age?