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Organic compoundAn organic compound is any member of a large class of chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of compounds such as carbonates, carbon oxides and cyanides, as well as elemental carbon are considered inorganic. The study of organic compounds is termed organic chemistry, and since it is a vast collection of chemicals (over half of all known chemical compounds), systems have been devised to classify organic compounds. A few of the compound classes based on so-called functional groups they carry are alcohols, aldehydes, alkenes and amines. A large group of organic compounds belong to the aromatic compounds because they share a common benzene ring somewhere in their structure. Organometallic compounds are a special group of organic compounds that incorporate a metal atom which make them a hybrid between organic and inorganic chemistry. Many polymers, including all plastics are organic compounds as well. Many organic compounds are also of prime importance in biochemistry: antigens, carbohydrates and sugars, enzymes, hormones, lipids and fatty acids, neurotransmitters, nucleic acids, proteins, peptides and amino acids, vitamins and fats and oils to name just a few. Additional recommended knowledge
HistoryThe name "organic" is a historical name, dating back to 19th century, when it was believed that organic compounds could only be synthesised in living organisms through vis vitalis - the "life-force". The theory that organic compounds were fundamentally different from those that were "inorganic", that is, not synthesized through a life-force, was disproved with the synthesis of urea, an "organic" compound by definition of its known occurrence only in the urine of living organisms, from potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate by Friedrich Wöhler in the Wöhler synthesis. The kinds of carbon compounds that are still traditionally considered inorganic are those that were considered inorganic before Wöhler's time; that is, those which came from "inorganic" (i.e., lifeless) sources such as minerals.[1] SourcesMost pure organic compounds today are artificially produced, although an important subset are still extracted from natural sources because they would be far too expensive to produce artificially. Examples include most sugars, some alkaloids and terpenoids, certain nutrients such as vitamin B12, and in general, those natural products with large or stereoisometrically complicated molecules which are present in reasonable concentrations in living organisms. Organic cheminformaticsThe statistical analysis of chemical structures is called chemical informatics. The Beilstein database contains a large collection of organic compounds. A cheminformatics study involving 5.9 million substances and 6.5 million reactions showed that the organic compound universe consists of a core of around 200,000 molecules strongly connected to each other and a large periphery (3.6 million molecules) around it.[2] Core and periphery are surrounded by a group of non-connected small islands containing 1.2 million molecules, a model resembling the world wide web. More key statistics:
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Categories: Organic compounds | Organic chemistry |
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Organic_compound". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |