Lexic.us

Definition of Amino acid

1. Noun. Organic compounds containing an amino group and a carboxylic acid group. "Proteins are composed of various proportions of about 20 common amino acids"

Definition of Amino acid

1. Noun. (organic chemistry) Any organic compound containing both an amino and a carboxylic acid functional group. ¹

2. Noun. (biochemistry) Any of the twenty naturally occurring ?-amino acids (having the amino, and carboxylic acid groups on the same carbon atom), and a variety of side chains, that combine, via peptide bonds, to form proteins. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Medical Definition of Amino acid

1. A class of organic molecules that containing an amino group and can combine in linear arrays to form proteins in living organisms. There are twenty common amino acids: alanine, arginine, aspargine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, and valine. They are key components in all living things from which proteins are synthesised by formation of peptide bonds during ribosomal translation of messenger RNA. All the amino acids have the L configuration, except glycine which is not optically active. Other amino acids occurring in proteins, such as hydroxyproline in collagen, are formed by post translational enzymatic modification of amino acid residues in polypeptide chains. There are also several important amino acids, such as the neurotransmitter y aminobutyric acid, that have no relation to proteins. Amino acids can now be produced by biotechnology in bulk using fermentation and biotransformation. Acronym: AA (13 Nov 1997)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Amino Acid

Literary usage of Amino acid

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. Elements of the Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates by Gustav Mann, Walther Löb, Henry William Frederic Lorenz, Robert Wiedersheim, William Newton Parker, Thomas Jeffery Parker, Harry Clary Jones, Sunao Tawara, Leverett White Brownell, Max Julius Louis Le Blanc, Willis Rodney Whitney, John Wesley Brown, Wi (1906)
"... converted into carbethoxy-compounds, and the latter by gentle warming with thionyl chloride into carbethoxy-amino-acid chlorides, for thionyl chloride, ..."

2. Science by American Association for the Advancement of Science (1919)
"The maximum increase produced in the blood of the liver by the different materials is given in Table 1. I* may be seen that the amino acid, ..."

3. Monographic Medicine by William Robie Patten Emerson, Guido Guerrini, William Brown, Wendell Christopher Phillips, John Whitridge Williams, John Appleton Swett, Hans Günther, Mario Mariotti, Hugh Grant Rowell (1916)
"The amino-acid nitrogen in the normal total 24 hours urine as determined by ... The cases of pathological increase in the amino-acid nitrogen fraction in ..."

4. Chemical Abstracts by American Chemical Society (1916)
"The ratio of amino acid N to urea N varies from 3.7:1 to i :6, so that one cannot definitely know the amino acid or urea content from the "rest" N figures. ..."

5. The Harvey Lectures by Harvey Society of New York, New York Academy of Medicine (1917)
"This is different in every amino-acid. It is the source of the individuality of each. There are eighteen varieties of such heads, as may be seen by glancing ..."

6. Journal of the American Chemical Society by American Chemical Society (1914)
"In 10 cc. the total amino nitrogen was estimated by the amino apparatus.3 A 5 cc. portion was used for the determination of the amino acid nitrogen by the ..."

7. The Journal of Biological Chemistry by American Society of Biological Chemists (1917)
"Histidine was removed with HgCl2 and the resultant amino-acid mixture gave a negative nitrogen balance. Addition of histidine had not the effect of ..."

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