tryptophan

Turkey does have a lot of tryptophan, but so does chicken, fish, cheese, and eggs—tryptophan levels aren’t enough to explain how sleepy you feel after overeating at Thanksgiving.

Cells in the brain convert tryptophan first into serotonin, a neurotransmitter that makes you feel happy, and then into melatonin, which makes you sleepy.

That’s because it helps decrease levels of tryptophan in the brain.

ART scanned through nearly 8,000 combinations of biochemical pathways to produce tryptophan, and recommended based on probabilities a way to double the chemical’s production.

Another set of training data, programming cells to make the protein component tryptophan, allowed ART to tease out the interaction between five different genes.

Spaghetti squash also contains specific nutrients that help convert the tryptophan in other foods you eat into serotonin.

To be sure, tryptophan as a white pill, not a slab of white meat, is used by some as a sleeping aid.

So tryptophan at pretty big doses is a routine part of being a human on planet Earth.

Probably not—the tryptophan story provides us with the perfect cover for the real reason we so love the holiday.

The premise is this: turkey is chock-full of a soporific essential amino acid, tryptophan, one of the 22 essential amino acids.

Trypsin: solution of small shreds of fresh fibrin in neutral and alkaline media, and tryptophan test.

A test for the production of tryptophan was reported positive.