Proteins are made up of elements of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. Proteins are a significant class of naturally occurring macromolecules in biological organisms. Term papers pertaining to protein structure usually tend to focus upon the arrangement of different types of amino acids. Polymers of amino acids forma protein, these polymers are also known as peptides consisting of twenty different types of amino acid sequences and are also termed as residues. Chains below forty peptides are usually termed as peptides instead of proteins. In term papers pertaining to protein structure students are asked to give detailed descriptions of how proteins structures fold into spatial conformations in order to perform biological functions. Proteins also undergo non-covalent reactions such as ionic interactions, hydrophobic packing and hydrogen bonding, these interactions and details of dimensional structures of proteins are mainly the focus of many research papers on protein structures. Term and research papers in structural biology are usually written in Vancouver style but may also be written according to the guidelines of CSE/CBE Style depending upon the word limit and other such institutional requirements.

Research papers on protein structure also tend to focus upon techniques applied for determining protein structure such as NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography. The lower limit of residues required to perform biochemical functions is forty to fifty. Protein size can range from forty to fifty residues to several thousand residues combined to form multi-functional structural proteins. At present, the average size of a protein is estimated to constitute of three hundred residues.