racemization

[ras-uh-muh-zey-shuhn, rey-see-muh-]

noun

Chemistry.

1. the conversion of an optically active substance into an optically inactive mixture of equal amounts of the dextrorotatory and levorotatory forms.

Word History and Origins

Origin of racemization¹

First recorded in 1890–95; raceme + -ization

Example Sentences

After living things die, the ratio between the two configurations changes at a predictable rate as part of a process called racemization.

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The liberated excited molecules then undergo racemization, and — in the absence of any factors that discriminate between the two enantiomers —eventually relax to form both S and R products in the ground state in equal quantities.

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Methods include looking at aspartic acid, an amino acid that is produced in living organisms in one of two forms, then slowly converts to the other in inert tissues through a process called racemization.

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Another dating technique, called “amino acid racemization,” has also suggested the rocks’ older age.

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This sets the method apart from tests that rely on biomarkers of age that work in only one or two tissues, including the gold-standard dating procedure, aspartic acid racemization, which analyses proteins that are locked away for a lifetime in tooth or bone.

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