-mer

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-mer is a Konfix (word component) in personal names and foreign words.

Personal names

-mer is part of early Germanic names such as Inguiomer , Segimer , Chariomer , Filimer , Chlodomer , Gelimer . These were derived from Gothic mērs famous, legendary .

From this personal names developed in -mar (Waldemar, Dietmar, Volkmar) in Scandinavian languages ​​and in German and -mir (Wladimir, Dragomir) in Slavic languages.

In Upper Sorbian there are names in -měr such as Radoměr, u. a.

chemistry

In chemistry and biochemistry , the syllable -mer is mainly used for the general naming of molecules . It is derived from the Greek µέρος meros , German “part” , “area”.

For molecules that are made up of a defined number of units (also called subunits when considering the whole ), a number such as mono , di , tri , oligo or poly is prefixed, which indicates the number of parts the molecule consists of. A tetramer therefore consists of four subunits, for example. In the broadest sense, it can be a protein , DNA , RNA or carbohydrates . The prefixes “homo-” or “hetero-” indicate whether the subunits are identical or not. In biology, proteins with several subunits, which themselves already consist of hundreds of amino acids, are referred to as di- or trimers. For example, hemoglobin is called a tetrameric protein because it is made up of four subunits. It would be pointless to refer to all proteins as “heteropolymers”, even though they are so in terms of their composition of different amino acids.

Polymers also refer to a class of plastics whose molecules consist of many identical subunits. If polymers are composed of different subunits, one speaks of heteropolymers .

Examples