Amino Acid Tryptophan Flag: W Flag or Trp

Happy Thanksgiving.  It's the most popular amino acid of the them all: Tryptophan.  Today several million Americans will invoke the name of Amino Acid W, better known Tryptophan.  It will be name dropped on the television news today.  Yet, very few will remember that it is only one of 21 other amino acids that will be consumed today.

The flag for Tryptophan uses the colours orange, yellow, white, and blue.  It fills up the square field completely and harmoniously.  There are 9 carbons in the R-Group, thus there are 9 white dots.  The field is blue because the R-Group contains a nitrogen.

Along the hoist is an orange and yellow stripe that refers to one letter abbreviation for this amino acid: W.  Orange is coded to 2 and yellow is coded to 3 in colour metrics, because orange is the 2nd colour and yellow is the 3 colour of the common spectrum.  Together these number make 23 and W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet.

Freddy Hopkins discovered this famous Turkey Day amino acid in 1901.  Fred was from the UK.

Amino Acid Valine Flag: V Flag or Val Flag

The Valine flag uses the colours orange, black and white. The white dots on the black field indicate three carbons make up the functional R-Group.  The dots also illustrate the geometric arrangement of the atoms in the branched V shape.

The orange stripes along the hoist relate to the number 22, because V is the 22nd number.  Reason being, orange is the 2nd colour of the common rainbow.  Thus it reads 2 and 2.  Also black is the assigned contrast indicator.  If the thin black contrast stripe was not present it would appear to be one orange block. 

 Amino Acid V was discovered by wonder biological alchemist Hermann Emil Fischer in the year 1901, Germany.

Valine is an essential ingredient to maintain stemcells that make blood.

Amino Acid Selenocystine: U Flag or Sec Flag

The flag for Selenocystine uses the colours orange, red, and black.  The single black dot represents the lone carbon in the R-Group.  The orange and red stripe refer to the Selenocystine's single letter abbreviation: U.  The stripes indicate the number 21 and U is the 21st number of the alphabet.  Red represents 1 and orange represents 2, together they make 21.

The orange field is unique for amino acid flags, since only one R-Group uses this rare transitional element.

Amino Acid U was discovered by a New Yorker, Thressa Stadtman sat the National Institutes of Health. Its discovery dates back to 1954 but name dates to 1959.

Amino Acid Treonine Flag: T Flag or Thr Flag

The flag for Threonine uses the colours orange, black, white, and pink.  It was first discovered in 1936 by an American from South Carolina, William Cumming Rose.

The black and white stripes relate to the one letter abbreviation for Threonine, which is T.  Since the letter T is the 20th letter of the alphabet the colour metric for 20 is used: orange represents one, while white represents zero.

Since this R-Group has two carbons, there are two black dots.  Also the field is pink as to indicate there is an alcohol in the amino acid T.  Pink is used to represent alcohol because in most models oxygen is usually red and hydrogen usually white: together, red with white makes pink.

Amino Acid Serine Flag: S Flag or Ser Flag

The flag for Serine uses the colours red, hot pink, pink and black.  The pink field indicates it has in alcohol attachment on its R-Group.  Alcohol simply consists of an oxygen with a hydrogen.  Usually oxygen is red in most diagrams and models while hydrogen is white.  When you mix white with red you can get pink.  Since there is only one carbon on the R-Group, there is only one black dot.


Emil Cramer of Germany discovered Serine in 1865 within silk. Consequently Serines name is based upon the Latin word for silk: sericum.   Thus nicknames for Serine: Silknine, Metaxiline (Greek), Seidenine (German), Soiesine (French), Shelkisine (Russian), Sutrasine (Indonesian), Sedasine (Spanish), Setasine (Italian), and most importantly Seesine (Chinese)

Amino Acid Arginine Flag: R Flag or Arg Flag

The flag for Arginine uses the colours red, black, blue and white.  The horizontal stripes along the hoist code to the number 18.  Reason being red is coded to 1 and black is coded to 8 in colour metrics.  The field is blue, so this indicates that Nitrogen is in the R-Group.  Amino Acid R has three Nitrogens in its R-Group.  The four dots also indicate that there are four Carbons on the R-Group.  The position of the dots also indicate that there three of the Carbons are connected while one is on its own.

A team by the name of Ernst & Ernst discovered amino acid R in 1886.  It was discovered in yellow lupin seedlings in Germany.  Since this amino acid had a silvery colour when studied by team Ernst they get it a silver prefix name.  Thus the fun nick names for this amino acid would be:

Silvernine = English
Yinine = Chinese
Kumisnine = Kazakh
Silbernine = German
Platanine = Spanish
Mongonine = Mongolian
Zilvernine = Dutch
Argentinine = French
Srebronin = Polish
Ngeinine = Thai
Chaandeenine = Hindi
Asiminine = Greek
Grumusine = Turkish
Bacnine = Vietnamese
Ginine = Japanese
Euninine = Korean
Hopeanine = Finnish
Ezustnine = Hungarian
Roopanine = Bangla
Zilarranine = Basque
Fidanine = Arabic
Pilaknine = Filipino

Amino Acid Gultamine Flag: Q Flag or Glu Flag

The flag for Glutamine uses the colours red, yellow, purple, and white.  The field is purple since the R-Group has nitrogen and oxygen.  Nitrogen and oxygen are usually represented by blue and red.  But since this amino acid has both the field the mixed hue: purple. The two white dots represent the two carbon atoms as well.

Along the hoist are three stripes: a thick red and purple stripe.  These stripes code to the number 17, which reflects the letter Q, which is the one letter symbol for Glutamine.  The three letter abbreviation is Gln.