formic acid

CHEBI:30751 ·resolve ·ANTIBACTERIAL ·EXACT SEEDED

The simplest carboxylic acid, containing a single carbon. Occurs naturally in various sources including the venom of bee and ant stings, and is a useful organic synthetic reagent. Principally used as a preservative and antibacterial agent in livestock feed. Induces severe metabolic acidosis and ocular injury in human subjects. — ChEBI

Machine-generated and unreviewed. Identity, structure and cross-references come straight from ChEBI's and CARD's own data; no curator has signed off on this record yet.

Classification

Strictly broader compounds or drug classes this molecule belongs to.

Label unavailable CHEBI:25384

Chemical structure

Computed structure properties
Molecular formula	CH2O2
Charge	0
Average mass	46.025 Da
Monoisotopic mass	46.00548 Da
Source	ChEBI
InChIKey	BDAGIHXWWSANSR-UHFFFAOYSA-N

SMILES

[H]C(=O)O

InChI

InChI=1S/CH2O2/c2-1-3/h1H,(H,2,3)

Also called

Acide formique (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
Ameisensäure (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
FORMIC ACID (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
Formic acid (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
HCO2H (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
HCOOH (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
H‒COOH (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
Methanoic acid (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
aminic acid (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
bilorin (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
formylic acid (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
hydrogen carboxylic acid (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi
methoic acid (EXACT_SYNONYM)— chebi

Cross-references

Identifiers for this same structure in other resources. An accession that lands on two different structures in this corpus is withheld from both rather than shown here, since it names at most one of them.

Drug registries

Identifiers that name a drug rather than a structure. One of these can cover a parent compound, its salts and its stereoisomers, which this corpus keeps as separate records, so it is not an equivalence of structure.

drugbank:DB01942

Patents and articles

Documents about this compound. A patent covers a class and an article covers a topic; neither identifies a structure.

Activity roles

Every antimicrobial role a source asserts for this compound — the unreduced evidence behind its antimicrobial_class.

antibacterial agent CHEBI:33282

Source concepts

Every upstream concept that resolved to this record. The merge is the product: this is what shows ChEBI and CARD are describing the same structure.

Upstream concepts merged into this record
Source	Native ID	Label	Minted CURIE	Version
CHEBI	`CHEBI:30751`	formic acid	`antibioticmech:chebi-feab863202`	2026-08-30

Curation history

SEEDED_FROM_SOURCES 2026-08-30 · seed_from_sources
Seeded from data/raw/ inventories (CHEBI)
RESEEDED_FROM_SOURCES 2026-08-30 · seed_from_sources
Re-seeded from updated data/raw/ inventories
RESEEDED_FROM_SOURCES 2026-08-30 · seed_from_sources
Re-seeded from updated data/raw/ inventories
RESEEDED_FROM_SOURCES 2026-09-10 · seed_from_sources
Re-seeded from updated data/raw/ inventories

Provenance

Seeded by scripts/seed_from_sources.py from the committed inventories in data/raw/. View the record (YAML).

Explore across X-Mech: MediaIngredientMech (formic acid) · CultureMech · NaturalProductMech · PathwayMech · TraitMech