<P> Glycine is an intermediate in the synthesis of a variety of chemical products . It is used in the manufacture of the herbicide glyphosate . </P> <P> Glycine is a significant component of some solutions used in the SDS - PAGE method of protein analysis . It serves as a buffering agent, maintaining pH and preventing sample damage during electrophoresis . Glycine is also used to remove protein - labeling antibodies from Western blot membranes to enable the probing of numerous proteins of interest from SDS - PAGE gel . This allows more data to be drawn from the same specimen, increasing the reliability of the data, reducing the amount of sample processing, and number of samples required . This process is known as stripping . </P> <P> The presence of glycine outside the earth was confirmed in 2009, based on the analysis of samples that had been taken in 2004 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust from comet Wild 2 and subsequently returned to earth . Glycine had previously been identified in the Murchison meteorite in 1970 . The discovery of cometary glycine bolstered the theory of panspermia, which claims that the "building blocks" of life are widespread throughout the Universe . In 2016, detection of glycine within Comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko by the Rosetta spacecraft was announced . </P> <P> The detection of glycine outside the solar system in the interstellar medium has been debated . In 2008, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy discovered the glycine - like molecule aminoacetonitrile in the Large Molecule Heimat, a giant gas cloud near the galactic center in the constellation Sagittarius . </P>

What two functional groups are present in glycine