Dehydrobutyrine

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An unsaturated amino acid derivative formed by dehydrating a butyrine residue, occurring in certain peptide antibiotics
2. A dehydrated form of an amino acid residue that is found within some bacterial peptide compounds
3. A chemical compound, an unsaturated amino acid unit, present in certain naturally occurring cyclic peptides

Etymology: Dehydrobutyrine is a chemical name assembled from three parts. The core, "butyr-", comes from Latin "butyrum", meaning butter, which borrows Greek "boutyron". Chemists used the stem for butyric acid, the sharp-smelling fatty acid found in butter, and the "-ine" ending marks a nitrogen-containing compound, as in amino acids and alkaloids. The prefix "dehydro-" signals that atoms have been removed from a parent molecule. Here the parent is threonine, an amino acid, and the removed atoms are the elements of water, leaving a double bond in its place. Dehydrobutyrine occurs in certain bacterial peptides, so the name records a chemical transformation rather than a dietary or culinary origin.