Organic compound

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Organic compounds comprise all chemical compounds containing carbon-hydrogen (C-H) bonds of covalent character. Due to historical reasons (see below) a few compounds containing carbon not bound to hydrogen are also subsumed under this term, like urea.

Organic compounds may contain atoms of further elements, so-called heteroatoms. A vast number and diversity of such compounds exist, whose corresponding discipline is organic chemistry. Organic synthesis is the methodology of their preparation.

History

The 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.

Classification

See Organic chemistry#Classification of organic substances

Organometallic compounds constitute a further subsection, characterised by covalent bonds between organic carbon and a metal.

There are also a lot of inorganic carbon compounds to distinguish from organic compounds.

Natural compounds

An important subset of organic compounds is still extracted from natural sources because they would be far too expensive to be produced 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.

Further compounds of prime importance in biochemistry are antigens, carbohydrates, enzymes, hormones, lipids and fatty acids, neurotransmitters, nucleic acids, proteins, peptides and amino acids, vitamins and fats and oils.

Synthetic compounds

Many polymers, including all plastics are organic compounds.

Nomenclature

The IUPAC nomenclature of organic compounds slightly differs from the CAS nomenclature.

Databases

The CAS database is the most comprehensive repository for data on organic compounds. The search tool SciFinder is offered .

The Beilstein database contains information on 9.8 million substances, covers the scientific literature from 1771 to the present, and is today accessible via CrossFire. Structures and a large diversity of physical and chemical properties is available for each substance, with reference to original literature.

PubChem contains 18.4 million entries on compounds and especially covers the field of medicinal chemistry.

There is a great number of more specialized databases for diverse branches of organic chemistry.

Structure determination

''See Structure determination

Today, the main tools are proton and carbon-13 NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography.

References

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Last updated on Sunday March 02, 2008 at 18:04:03 PST (GMT -0800)
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