Word of the Day:
carnitine
What It Means
A betaine, 3-hydroxy-4-trimethylammonio-butanoate, that is found in the liver and has a function in fatty acid transport.
Carnitine in Context
“Carnitine likely functions in maintaining homeostasis in many metabolic pathways and physiological conditions, with carnitine's role in energy metabolism homeostasis being the best studied.”
Did You Know?
From German Carnitin, coined from Latin carn- + Latin -i- + -t- (“arbitrary insertion”) + -in, for it was first described in meat extracts in 1905. By surface analysis, Latin carnit- + -ine.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: carnitine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “carnitine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carnitine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
