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Medical Definition of Edman degradation
1. A lab technique used to find out the order of amino acids in a polypeptide (chain of amino acids). It involves using the Edman reagent, phenyl isothiocyanate (PITC), to react one by one with each amino acid, in order. The technique is used in machines which automatically sequence (determine the order of subunits) polypeptides. (09 Oct 1997)