Amino Acid Abbreviations

French chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet were the first to discover amino acids in 1806. They isolated a compound in asparagus and found it to be asparagine. Thus, making asparagine as the first amino acid to be discovered. Then, in 1810, the second amino acid to be discovered was cystine. By 1884, the monomer of cystine, cysteine was discovered. Around 1820, two more amino acids were discovered, namely, glycine and leucine.

What Are Amino Acids?

Amino acids are those molecules that contain an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side chain. This side varies in different amino acids. The amino acids contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen elements. These are very important molecules in biochemistry and called alpha-amino acids. They have a general formula h₂NCHRCOOH, where the R is an organic substituent.

Amino Acids Functions

Amino acids are important as they have many metabolic functions. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins that have a linear chain of amino acids. The primary structure of a protein is an amino acid that has turned into a three-dimensional structure. Amino acids are linked together to form long chains and each varying sequences leads to formation of different proteins.

Amino acids form parts of co-enzymes, or act as precursors for the biosynthesis of molecules. Thus, amino acids are very important part of nutrition as they play a central role in biochemistry. Amino acids are also used in food industry and for production of biodegradable plastics, drugs and even as chiral catalysts.

Table of Amino Acid Abbreviations

As mentioned above, each amino acid has one amine and one acid functional group. The amino acids get their specific properties from the different R groups attached. The amino acids have special common names and most of the time 3 letter amino acid abbreviations are used. The single letter abbreviations are used in case of long protein structures.

Name of Amino Acid	3 Letter Abbreviation	Single Letter Abbreviation
Alanine	Ala	A
Arginine	Arg	R
Asparagine	Asn	N
Aspartic acid	Asp	D
Cysteine	Cys	C
Glutamine	Gln	Q
Glutamic cid	Glu	E
Glycine	Gly	G
Histidine	His	H
Isoleucine	Ile	I
Leucine	Leu	L
Lysine	Lys	K
Methionine	Met	M
Phenylalanine	Phe	F
Proline	Pro	P
Serine	Ser	S
Threonine	Thr	T
Tryptophan	Trp	W
Tyrosine	Tyr	Y
Valine	Val	V

Table of Ambiguous Amino Acids

Ambiguous Amino Acids	3-Letter	1-Letter
Asparagine or aspartic acid	Asx	B
Glutamine or glutamic acid	Glx	Z
Leucine or Isoleucine	Xle	J
Unspecified or unknown amino acid	Xaa/ Unk	X

This was the table of amino acids abbreviation, that shows 3 letter amino acid abbreviations and single letter amino acid abbreviation. These abbreviations are according to the International Nucleotide Sequence Database.