R Is for Arginine

Abstract

and provided its distinction as 1 of the 3 basic amino acids. Abundant in many types of food, synthesized from simple precursors, or recycled in different tissues in the body, arginine is classified as a nonessential amino acid; except under extreme conditions, nutritional states of arginine deficiency are rare. Yet how much more complicated and interesting has arginine become in the past 3 decades! The role of arginine as a humdrum amino acid was forever transformed by the discovery that this amino acid is a substrate for the formation of nitric oxide by all mamma-lian nitric oxide synthases.