Used as a protected form of alanine in peptide synthesis, enabling selective reactions at other functional sites without interference from the amine group. The tert-butoxycarbonyl (Boc) protecting group is stable under a variety of reaction conditions and can be removed under mild acidic conditions, making it ideal for multi-step organic syntheses, especially in pharmaceuticals and bioactive molecule development. Commonly employed in solid-phase peptide synthesis and medicinal chemistry for constructing complex amino acid derivatives.