Alanine

General Information (more on wikipidia)

Species Molecular Weight (g/mol) Density Radius Reference
Alanine 89.1 D R [1]

Alanine is an α-amino acid with the chemical formula HO2CCH(NH2)CH3. The L-isomer is one of the 20 proteinogenic amino acids, i.e. the building blocks of proteins. Its three letter code is ala, its one letter code is A, and its codons are GCU, GCC, GCA, and GCG. It is classified as an nonpolar amino acid. L-alanine is second only to leucine, accounting for 7.8% of the primary structure in a sample of 1,150 proteins. D-alanine occurs in bacterial cell walls and in some peptide antibiotics.

Alanine is most commonly produced by reductive amination of pyruvate. Because transamination reactions are readily reversible and pyruvate pervasive, alanine can be easily formed and thus has close links to metabolic pathways such as glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, and the citric acid cycle. It also arises together with lactate and generate glucose from protein via the alanine cycle.

Diffusion of in water:

  • Alone at 25 degrees: $D = 910 \ \mu m^{2} s^{-1}$ [1]

Diffusion of in PBS:

  • $D = \ \mu m^{2} s^{-1}$

Diffusion of in cellular matrix:

  • $D = \ \mu m^{2} s^{-1}$
Bibliography
1. Longsworth, L. G. 1955. Diffusion in liquids and the Stokes-Einstein relation, p. 225-247. In T. Shedlovsky (ed.), Electrochemistry in biology and medicine. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, N.Y.
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License