Ornithine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in the body, but mostly as an intermediate in your body's nitrogen disposal cycle.
It rarely occurs in proteins, and we weren't sure why until some people tried to make some ornithine-containing polypeptides. Turns out it's not very well behaved, since a six membered ring will form, given any opportunity. It self-cleaves.
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The name ornithine suggests some connection with birds. Is there one?
Andy,
Indeed there is.
Oh, had to memorize this in the Urea Cycle pathway Fall 2007 semester at Rutgers in my Molecular Bio & Biochemistry course. Wooo