Chemical strucutre of citric acid.

A citrate is an ionic form of citric acid, such as C₃H₅O(COO)₃³⁻, that is, citric acid minus three hydrogen ions. Citric Acid Structure; created using ChemSketch and Photoshop File links The following pages link to this file: Citric acid Categories: GFDL images ... Citric Acid Structure; created using ChemSketch and Photoshop File links The following pages link to this file: Citric acid Categories: GFDL images ... // An ion is an atom, group of atoms, or subatomic particle with a net electric charge. ... Citric acid is a weak organic acid found in citrus fruits. ... Citric acid is a weak organic acid found in citrus fruits. ... Hydronium is the common name for the cation H3O+. Nomenclature According to IUPAC ion nomenclature, it should be referred to as oxonium. ...

Citrates are compounds containing this group, either ionic compounds, the salts, or analogous covalent compounds, esters. An example of a salt is sodium citrate and an ester is trimethyl citrate. See category for a bigger list. A magnified crystal of a salt (halite/sodium chloride) In chemistry, a salt is any ionic compound composed of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions, so that the product is neutral and without a net charge. ... General formula of an ester of a carboxylic acid. ... Sodium citrate is the sodium salt of citric acid with the chemical formula of Na3C6H5O7. ...

Since citric acid is a multifunctional acid, intermediate ions exist, hydrogen citrate ion, HC₆H₅O₇²⁻ and dihydrogen citrate ion, H₂C₆H₅O₇⁻. These may form salts as well, called acid salts. Acid salt is a chemical compound, formed when a dibasic or tribasic acid was neutralized to some degree. ...

Salts of the hydrogen citrate ions are weakly acidic, while salts of the citrate ion itself (with an inert cation such as sodium ion) are weakly basic.

Citrate is a key component in the commonly used SSC 20X hybridization buffer. There exists authoritative literature (Maniatis) that incorrectly instructs the preparation of this buffer to include 3M NaCl and 0.3M Sodium Citrate, to be titrated up with NaOH to a pH of 7. When the two components are actually mixed together, the pH is slightly basic. Therefore, the pH of the solution should instead be titrated down to 7 with either citric acid or HCl.

Citrate is also an intermediate in the TCA (Krebs) Cycle. After pyruvate dehydrogenase forms acetyl CoA (from pyruvate using five cofactors: TPP, lipoamide, FAD, NAD+, and CoA), Citrate Synthase catalyzes the condensation of OAA with Acetyl CoA to form citrate. The rest of the cycle entails subsequent conversion into isocitrate, alpha-keto glutarate, succinyl-CoA, succinate, fumarate, malate, and back to OAA. These reactions are catalyzed by isocitrate dehydrogenase, alpha-keto glutarate dehydrogenase, succinyl-CoA synthetase, succinate dehydrogenase, fumarase, and malate dehydrogenase, respectively.