Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Oligomers' role in the development of Parkinson's disease

Researchers at Aarhus University, Denmark, have drawn up the most detailed 'image of the enemy' to date of one of the body's most important players in the development of Parkinson's disease. This provides much greater understanding ...

Alzheimer's disease & dementia

Discovery sheds light on why Alzheimer's meds rarely help

New research reveals that the likely culprit behind Alzheimer's disease has a different molecular structure than current drugs' target—perhaps explaining why these medications produce little improvement in patients.

Alzheimer's disease & dementia

Scientists identify molecular trigger for Alzheimer's disease

Researchers have pinpointed a catalytic trigger for the onset of Alzheimer's disease – when the fundamental structure of a protein molecule changes to cause a chain reaction that leads to the death of neurons in the brain.

Alzheimer's disease & dementia

Modeling Alzheimer's disease using iPSCs

Working with a group from Nagasaki University, a research group at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Japan's Kyoto University has announced in the Feb. 21 online publication of Cell Stem Cell has ...

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Oligomer

In chemistry, an oligomer is a molecule that consists of a few monomer units (ολιγος, or oligos, is Greek for "a few"), in contrast to a polymer that, at least in principle, consists of an unlimited number of monomers. Dimers, trimers, and tetramers are oligomers. Many oils are oligomeric, such as liquid paraffin. Plasticizers are oligomeric esters widely used to soften thermoplastics such as PVC. They may be made from monomers by linking them together, or by separation from the higher fractions of crude oil. Polybutene is an oligomeric oil used to make putty. Greek prefixes are often used to designate the number of monomer units in the oligomer, for example a tetramer being composed of four units and a hexamer of six.

In biochemistry, the term oligomer is used for short, single-stranded nucleic acid fragments, such as DNA or RNA, or similar fragments of analogs of nucleic acids such as peptide nucleic acid or Morpholinos. Such oligos are used in hybridization experiments (bound to glass slides or nylon membranes), as probes for in situ hybridization or in antisense experiments such as gene knockdowns. It can also refer to a protein complex made of two or more subunits. In this case, a complex made of several different protein subunits is called a hetero-oligomer or heteromer. When only one type of protein subunit is used in the complex, it is called a homo-oligomer or homomer.

Oligomerization is a chemical process that converts monomers to a finite degree of polymerization. The actual figure is a matter of debate, often a value between 10 and 100.[citation needed]

When an oligomer forms as a result of chain transfer the oligomer is called a telomer and the process telomerization. A telomere is a region of highly repetitive DNA at the end of a linear chromosome.

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