Commonly referred to as “the building blocks of life”, amino acids play an absolutely essential role in the life of almost every living organism since they’re the main components of proteins. There are twenty-two standard amino acids (and many more non-standard), of which twenty are encoded by the universal genetic code. Of these twenty, eight amino acids are considered “essential” for human life. Essential amino acids cannot be synthesized from other compounds in the body and so must be obtained through the diet exclusively. The eight essential amino acids are isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. Non-essential amino acids include alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, histidine, ornithine, proline, selenocysteine, serine, taurine, and tyrosine.