L-Glycine

Glycine is the simplest of the twenty proteinogenic amino acids and the only one without a chiral centre: its side chain is a single hydrogen atom, so no D- or L- form exists. Material listed in trade catalogues as L-glycine and material listed as glycine are the same substance, and the prefix is a naming convention rather than a chemical distinction. The powder is white, odourless and noticeably sweet, dissolving in water at roughly 250 g per litre at 25 °C while remaining practically insoluble in ethanol and diethyl ether. Glycine is the residue that makes the collagen triple helix geometrically possible, occupying approximately every third position in the Gly-X-Y repeat because only a hydrogen side chain is small enough to sit at the helix core. It is also the nitrogen backbone the body draws on to build creatine, glutathione, haem porphyrins and bile-acid conjugates, and it acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the spinal cord and brainstem. Unlike most amino acids in this catalogue, bulk glycine is not a fermentation product: the dominant industrial route is catalytic ammonolysis of monochloroacetic acid, with Strecker (glycolonitrile) and hydantoin routes also in commercial use. No animal-derived input enters any of these processes, which supports vegetarian and vegan label positions. Thovek ships glycine from India against USP, Ph. Eur. and FCC specifications, with pharmaceutical, food, feed and technical grades held to different impurity and particle-size profiles. Every lot travels with a batch Certificate of Analysis, SDS, and the origin, allergen, GMO and residual-solvent statements that formulators and customs brokers ask for. Mesh-cut milling, sampling and export documentation against the 29224910 tariff line are handled in-house.