Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2024 October 7
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October 7
editNaming of gorgonin
editI'm trying to write a history section on Gorgonin, a protein found in some corals. Searches for the discoverer turned up a 1939 paper and 2019 book (WP Library link), both of which agree that a specific 1855 paper by Valenciennes was the first to name it "gorgonin". But in the paper itself it appears to name the substance "cornéine". Am I'm missing something? It seems like they can't both have just not read the paper, especially considering the book has a different page range listed than the 1939 paper does.
Basically, I have three questions:
- (The book is unclear on this, and it's hard to understand through the bad English) Is gorgonin a substance (not just made of one protein and no other constituents), a single protein, or does it vary?
- Does anyone know what "iadogorgic acid" is? The book describes its discovery as the beginning of the study of "gorgonin as a substance"
- Am I missing something with regards to the naming situation? It seems confusing.
Mrfoogles (talk) 23:09, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
- https://archive.org/details/zeitschriftfrbi23unkngoog/page/92/mode/1up had some discussion of the name. Apparently gorgonin and cornein are different? Personally I think both authors you linked must have made a mistake, since gorgonin isn't mentioned in the French paper. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 09:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
- It seems that gorgonin is collagen-like. There are many collagens, in humans there are now 28 (last I read about this there were 21). In the case of gorgonin (and, like collagen, there has to be more than one, as it is found in 500 species that have had a long time to diverge), it seems that the collagen-like material is secreted (and possibly altered later) to be more resistant to dissolving in water than our collagen. Abductive (reasoning) 20:53, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, and it's named after the coral, Gorgonia, so named by Linnaeus in 1758, presumably after the Greek mythological Gorgons. Abductive (reasoning) 20:57, 9 October 2024 (UTC)