Talk:Oligomer

Oligomer and multimer, biochemistry vs chemistry

Multimer redirects to this page, which describes two very different things. On one side, it describes the chemical oligo-mer that is a poly-mer with only a few (pseudo)identical units. Polymers are polysaccharides (e.g. starch, cellulose), or polypeptide or polystyrene. On the other side, it describes the biochemical multimer, that is a non covalent assembly of units. A multimer is hemoglobin etc.

• In a chemical polymer, the units that participate to the polymerization disappear. Contrarily to what we abusively say, a polypeptide is not "made up of amino-acids", because the amines and acids have been consumed in the polymerisation.
• In a multimer, the units are conserved.

This is a debate that comes again and again in my domain, where many people are neither chemist or biochemist, but originate from math or physics. Wikipedia is their ultimate source of knowledge (which is good). One way of solving that would be to split the page in two: oligomer and multimer. We would still mention the ambiguity of everyday use. But at least new learners would use the right terms immediately and not spread this ambiguity. Nicolas Le Novère (talk) 17:39, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Good idea, although multimer redirects to this page it is not explicitly mentioned, the biochemistry bit (non-covalent) is confusing. The page would benefit from a separation of concepts. V8rik (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm strongly in favor, can someone do it who knows this stuff? 84.227.242.247 (talk) 18:20, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Definition or scientific result

Oligomerization is a chemical process that converts monomers to macromolecular complexes through a finite degree of polymerization. The actual figure for degree of polymerization is a matter of debate, often a value between 10 and 100.

Is the debate over what should count as oligomerization (the definition, or a report on word usage), or about the empirical outcome of some reaction scenario that is not spelled out here? 84.227.242.247 (talk) 18:12, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Since Lenov and I appear to be reverting one another, I thought I'd bring the discussion here. I've found several reliable resources that the IPA for "oligomer" is /əˈlɪɡəmər/, including the reference that I added personally. The "o" sounds that Lenov is replacing with ɒ and oʊ are on unstressed syllables and undergo vowel reduction. Lenov - if you listen to the sound file of me pronouncing it (which I did based on my professional experience with the word, not necessarily based on the IPA), you'll hear that indeed the "o" sounds have reduced to schwas. In any case, I don't think, "I use the word every day" trumps reliable resources anyway. I say we restore the original /əˈlɪɡəmər/, per the sources. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:42, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

It's been about a day so I reverted to the original version which is confirmed by the sources. I found one dictionary that uses /ɒˈlɪɡəmər/ (Collins) and three that use /əˈlɪɡəmər/: OED, dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster. I'm not sure why Collins uses a different one, may be a stylistic difference between the dictionaries, or just a mistake. Some of this may also come down to a BrE vs. AmE thing as well - "oligomer" only shows up in the British edition of the Collins Dictionary, M-W is an American dictionary, but OED is also a British dictionary, so I don't know. I'm inclined to keep it as it is for now unless we can find some credible references that indicate that there are two pronunciations (and not that Collins, the odd man out, didn't just make a mistake).

I'll also address the comparison to Oligocene brought up in an edit summary - I've never heard it pronounced, but I can see right off that /ˈɒlɨɡoʊsiːn/ has the primary stress on the first syllable, and as such that "o" isn't going to undergo vowel reduction as it does in "oligomer". I'm guessing that the second "o" in "oligocene" doesn't reduce because of the sound following it, which is a sibilant not a nasal, but I'm not familiar enough with vowel reduction rules in English to say that for sure. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Layout

I'm not sure that the current layout of the IUPAC quote is ideal. Happy to be overruled if I'm in the minority (then vs now)! I prefer the former (side) layout because the line lengths are shorter and it doesn't take up a whole section. I recommend using |width=600 to control width (IP address rightly removed hard <br>s through the quote which is what made it full-width). T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 23:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

To do: divide lede into new sections in the body of the article

Jamgoodman (talk) 12:43, 27 April 2019 (UTC)