Choosing The Right L-Glutamine Dipeptide To Improve Your Cell Culture Performance

By Dr. Martin Schilling, Senior Product Manager for Cell Culture Ingredients, Evonik Health Care

L-Glutamine is used by practically all human and animal cells as a carbon source for growth and as a building block for proteins. Due to its important role in energy supply, it is typically present in cell culture media at higher concentrations than other amino acids.

However, free L-glutamine can also result in several problems, when used in cell culture media. In particular, it is widely known that the chemical degradation of glutamine into ammonia and pyroglutamate while in liquid media can negatively affect cell culture performance. An elegant and natural method to stabilize glutamine against chemical degradation by synthesis of a dipeptide was developed in the field of parenteral nutrition solutions by Fürst¹ and coworkers more than three decades ago. This approach has since been rapidly adopted in cell culture media applications, with L-alanyl-L-glutamine being probably the best-known dipeptide that is also available in various ready-to-use supplements.