Amino acid

Description

A class of organic acids that contain both an amine group and a carboxylic acid group. There are 25 amino acids that are the basic building blocks for proteins. Individual amino acids can be broken apart by the hydrolysis of proteins, then analyzed by chromatography to characterize the composition of the parent compound.

Synonyms and Related Terms

amino acids (pl.); aminokyselina (Ces.); aminosyre (Dan., Nor.); Aminosäuren (Deut.); aminoácido (Esp., Port.); acide aminé (Fr.); amminoacidi (It.); aminozuur (Ned.); aminokwas (Pol.); aminosyra (Sven.)

Additional Information

° Wikipedia at Amino acid for structure, symbols and properties of 20 most common amino acids.

° D. Considine, Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976.

Authority

• G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 56

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• Richard C. Wolbers, Nanette T. Sterman, Chris Stavroudis, Notes for Workshop on New Methods in the Cleaning of Paintings, J.Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 1990

• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at http://www.wikipedia.com Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid (Accessed Mar. 20, 2006) -for non-English terms

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998