Alanine

//ˈæləniːn// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A nonessential amino acid 2-aminopropanoic acid found in most animal proteins uncountable

    "Potatoes can be a good source of alanine."

  2. 2
    a crystalline amino acid that occurs in many proteins wordnet
  3. 3
    A specific residue, molecule, or isomer of this amino acid countable

    "Two alanines are replaced by prolines."

Synonyms

All synonyms
amino acidaalaala

Example

More examples

"Potatoes can be a good source of alanine."

Etymology

From aldehyde + -anine, in reference to aldehyde, with the infix -an- for ease of pronunciation, when the German chemist Adolph Strecker first synthesized alanine in 1850 by mixing acetaldehyde (then just known as aldehyde) with ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, and hydrochloric acid.

Related phrases

nonessential amino acid

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.