Proteinogenic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing the amino acids that play a direct role in protein construction, this term is connected to the biochemical building blocks necessary for forming proteins in biological systems
2. Pertaining to amino acids that are used by living organisms to construct proteins
3. Connected with the subset of amino acids that are directly assembled into polypeptide chains

Etymology: "Proteinogenic" is a modern scientific coinage, built in English from parts that came into the language centuries apart. The first part, "protein," was named in 1838 by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Johannes Mulder, who took it from the Greek "prōteios," meaning "primary" or "of the first rank," and the word's sense has stayed close to that idea of foundational importance. The second part, "-genic," comes from the Greek "-genēs," meaning "produced by" or "born of," a sense it shares with "genos," meaning "kind" or "birth," from which it descends. The suffix "-genic" reached English through Latin "-genes" and, in the Middle English period, through Old French "-gene" and "-ique." English then combined these into "-genic," which by the 19th and 20th centuries had become a productive ending for forming technical adjectives. Its contribution to "proteinogenic" is simple: it means that the amino acids in question are the ones "produced" for building proteins, while the "-o-" is a connecting vowel that joins the two halves.