Oxoglutarate

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A chemical compound involved in cellular metabolism, specifically a key intermediate in the Krebs cycle and important for amino acid synthesis
2. A molecule playing a crucial role in energy production within cells by participating in the citric acid cycle and serving as a substrate for enzymatic reactions in biosynthesis
3. An organic acid derivative that functions in metabolic pathways to assist in energy transformation and acts as a precursor for various biosynthetic processes in living organisms

Etymology: Oxoglutarate is a chemical coinage, built from its parent acid's name rather than from any older word. Its base, oxoglutaric acid, is itself a systematic name: "oxo" marks a ketone group (a carbon double-bonded to oxygen), and "glutaric" refers to glutaric acid, a five-carbon dicarboxylic acid whose name comes from "glutamic," the amino acid that was itself named from gluten, the wheat protein where it was first found. The "-ate" ending is the standard chemical suffix for a salt or ester of an acid, so this word names the anionic form of the acid as it appears in solution. The compound is best known as alpha-ketoglutarate, the fifth intermediate of the citric acid cycle, where it is produced from isocitrate and then converted to succinyl-CoA. Its name therefore records a chain of structural description: a ketone on a five-carbon acid, handled by the cell in its salt form.

Synonyms: alpha-ketoglutarate, 2-oxoglutarate