Oxoglutaric

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to oxoglutaric acid, a keto acid that serves as an intermediate in the citric acid cycle of cellular respiration
2. Describing or derived from oxoglutaric acid, a five-carbon keto dicarboxylic acid important in metabolic chemistry
3. Of or involving oxoglutaric acid, a biochemical compound central to energy production within living cells

Etymology: Oxoglutaric is a chemist's coinage built from parts that were each in use long before it appeared. "Glutaric" comes from "glutamic" plus the suffix for a dicarboxylic acid, and glutamic acid itself takes its name from gluten, the wheat protein, because the amino acid was first isolated from wheat gluten in 1866 by the German chemist Karl Heinrich Ritthausen. The "oxo" prefix, from the Greek "oxys" meaning sharp or acid, signals a carbonyl group (a carbon double-bonded to oxygen) on the chain. Put together, the name describes a five-carbon dicarboxylic acid with a ketone group on its second carbon. Its importance lies in biochemistry rather than in everyday speech. The compound, usually written as 2-oxoglutarate, is an intermediate in the citric acid cycle, the series of reactions by which cells extract energy from food. Because its name was formed systematically by chemists, the word is transparent to anyone who knows the parts, and it sits in English without a folk history or a famous coiner behind it.