Definition of "formylmethionine" []

• Alternative spelling of formyl methionine. (noun)

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• "In intro bio (which I took almost forty years ago) we were told that the reason that methionine is the universal "start" amino acid (among prokaryotes) is that it can be modified in such a way (by the addition of an aldehyde functional group, yielding N-formylmethionine) as to set the direction of polymerization by limiting the addition of new amino acids to one end of the growing polypeptide chain."