Largest organic compouds

C

Chatha

big brown was screwed up
Registered Senior Member
What is the largest organic compound with the most carbon and hydrogen atoms. Its most likely going to be a fat but I don't know.
 
What do you mean by "largest?" Molecular weight? Size? Number of atoms?

And why may it be a fat? Perhaps a carbohydrate?
 
Absane said:
What do you mean by "largest?" Molecular weight? Size? Number of atoms?

And why may it be a fat? Perhaps a carbohydrate?
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fats have longer chains than oil. Fats are the largest organic compounds. The size is usually determined by the number of carbon atoms.

buckfullerine is supposedly very large
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Whats the molecular formular?
 
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Well yes it could be a fat but fats and I believe carbohydrates are in a group called lipids so I think it's definetly a lipid of some kind. All lipids usually have twice as many hydrogens as carbons plus 1 and have a group on the top depending on what type of lipid that usaully contains a few oxygens or nitrogen. But remember it doesnt necessarily have to be a lipid as Hydrogen and oxygen are pretty light. I would look at some sugar compounds as well.
 
There are some proteins with some bizarre sizes, especially ENAPTIN...

C44189 H71252 N12428 O14007 S321



There's also a protein called TITIN (sometimes CONNECTIN) that is even bigger:

C132983 H211861 N36149 O40883 S693

and the official long chemical name is 189,819 letters long!!

Apparently its to do with striated muscle formation.
 
Proteins. No limit on how large they get. But then if we take most organic polymers, you can see...
Cellulose? Keratin? Spiderwebs? Chitin? Polyethylene?

If we exclude polymerized organic compounds (which can be very large) and other polymers then proteins imo would be the largest class of organic compound.
 
Facial said:
If we exclude polymerized organic compounds (which can be very large) and other polymers then proteins imo would be the largest class of organic compound.
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It could be argued that proteins are just polymerized amino acids.
 
draqon said:
which one?
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Well, as said above:

There's also a protein called TITIN (sometimes CONNECTIN)


C132983 H211861 N36149 O40883 S693

i.e. it has 132,983 Carbon atoms, 211,861 Hydrogen, 36,149 Nitrogen, 40,883 Oxygen and a mere 693 Sulphur atoms.

It's large.

And the official long chemical name is 189,819 letters long!!

Apparently its to do with striated muscle formation.
 
Nasor said:
It could be argued that proteins are just polymerized amino acids.
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In some cases. In others, you start to get a three-dimensional (ternary and above) conformations in the layers, made possible by disulfide bonds.

In this sense it's a little similar to vulcanized rubber, but we see that as you extend the size, the functionality of a certain protein changes into various forms (the gazillions of enzymes) or gets destroyed, or you can build it to a certain size and stop such that the protein itself becomes a monomer (as in spiderwebs or keratin). In essence there's a limit for functionality on a protein on certain size conditions, but the limit to which monoblock proteins can be built that define a unique purpose is probably limitless.

Contrast this with synthetic polymers, which have more or less linear profiles and predictable properties in the bulk form. Sugars like glycogen and starch behave likewise. Lipids likewise.

Or in short, proteins are "exciting" while other polymers are "boring."
 
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