An essential amino acid or indispensable amino acid is an amino acid that cannot be synthesized de novo by the organism (usually referring to humans), and therefore must be supplied in the diet.
Read more about Essential Amino Acid: Essentiality Vs. Conditional Essentiality in Humans, Recommended Daily Amounts, Use of Essential Amino Acids, Essential Amino Acid Deficiency, Mnemonics
Famous quotes containing the word essential:
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)