Longest Chemical Name: 64,060 letters

mycro writes "A new article on Wikipedia shows the longest chemical name, reaching 64,060 letters. Methionylalanylthreonyl...leucine is a chemical name for enaptin, a nuclear envelope protein found in human myocytes and synapses, which is made up of 8,797 amino acids. It is involved in the maintenance of nuclear organization and structural integrity, tethering the cell nucleus to the cytoskeleton by interacting with the nuclear envelope and with F-actin in the cytoplasm."

Comments

Spelling bee

[regcrusher]

I dare the contestants of the Scrips-Howard spelling bee to get that one. "May I hear that word in a sentence?" "Uh...... (nervous) no."

Re:Easy Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

Or those who RTFA would call it enaptin.

Re:I blame IUPAC nomenclature

[Dr. GeneMachine]

This is no IUPAC problem - this long name is simply the sequence. If you have a functional protein, you have other nomenclatures at hand, for example the IEC classification for enzymes. Biochemists have developed several systems of nomenclature, which are actually useful (Overview here. IUPAC has its place for small molecules organic chemists are concerned with.

By the way, if you want a longer and equally useless chemical name, you can always spell out the nucleotid sequence of a whole chromosome in full nomenclature.