User talk:Sannse/Methionylglutaminyl...serine

This statement appeared from an anonymous IP:

The above is misspelled, it has 4 letters too many.

Please could someone (with too much free time) verify the word.
SimonMayer 22:43, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I checked it with MS Word. Either the number of letters stated in the article is wrong or the word is spelled wrong.

Did you include the spaces and hyphens that are in there?

I double checked, with OOo, being careful to remove the hyphens and spaces, I got 1913 characters, or four too many.Matt 13:24, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've checked the 1971 Guinness Book of Records and put a scan of the entry at Image:Long word.png. The entry confirms there should be 1,913 letters but the word as printed is 1,912 letters. I've checked through letter by letter and our version has an extra "l" at position 111 - which I believe is correct. Other than this, the version in the article matches the Guinness entry exactly. Yep... I have too much free time -- sannse (talk) 19:39, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm just glad nobody has put up a {{wrongtitle|title=methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamyl... }} header. JRM 00:35, 2004 Dec 25 (UTC)

you spoke too soon ;) -- sannse (talk) 10:59, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Longest chemical word for...

The statement "it is the longest chemical word for C₁₂₈₉H₂₀₅₁N₃₄₃O₃₇₅S₈" is ambiguous. Does it mean, as written, that this word is the longest way to write out the name of C₁₂₈₉H₂₀₅₁N₃₄₃O₃₇₅S₈, amongst other possibilities (such as "tryptophan synthase"), or rather (as befits an entry in the Guinness Book) that it is the longest chemical word that exists, and happens to be for the chemical C₁₂₈₉H₂₀₅₁N₃₄₃O₃₇₅S₈? 144.213.253.14 02:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Article irrelevant to Wikipedia

Sorry to bash the Guiness Book of World records, but I'm not satisfied with that reference. In addition, naming a protein by its sequence is utterly stupid, as the sequence changes from species or even strain to another. I could name thousands of proteins that if named using this convention would be at list five fold longer. Finally I have checked the sequence, although the sequence seems to be the one of a Tryptophan synthase most likely a strain of Escherichia coli it does not correspond to a sequence published in the public domain databases (Swiss Prot and NCBI nr) therefore I suppose that the person who wrote this name got quite a number of residues wrong which would invalidate the accuracy of the article. I'm deeply disturbed by the fact that so many people lost their time on counting the number of letters without questioning the validity of the article. I have nominated this article for deletetion as it does not belong to Wikipedia. Feel free to discuss the matter with me. Blastwizard 15:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I did some more research, and firstly the sequence of tryptophan synthase was published int 1967 and the 18th edition of the Guiness book dates from 1972. The least we can say is that it is not an up to date information, since then genome sequencing technology has made miracles in that field. To date, the longest protein sequence I could find (not necessarily the longest of all) is the "Nuclear envelope spectrin repeat protein 1" from human genome which is 8797 residues long, sequenced in 2001. I had a bit of time to spare, so I wrote a small program to write the name of the protein the same way as in the article from the residue sequence, and the name I obtained is 66077 letters long! Blastwizard 10:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

You seem not only to have not read this talk page, but you have not read this article. As the article says, not only is this not the usual way of writing the name, it's not the longest. It's interest is in that it was quoted as the longest by the Guinness Book of Records. And that fact is fully verified, I had the book sent to me from Cambridge University to check that the entry was valid (it was the 1971 version by the way, although I don't know the publishing date). I'm not going to contest the deletion at this point, although I disagree very strongly with your reasons - this is most certainly not a hoax - and almost as strongly about the "unencyclopaedic" reason others gave, but I will keep it in my user space for my own enjoyment. And if you want to accuse me of lying about verifying this, or of being a sockpuppet, then please go ahead. That's not happened since Lir's day -- sannse (talk) 23:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

That you embellish your user page with that word is fine to me, I can even give you my Perl script to name other proteins if it pleases you. Sorry to upset you by calling this article a hoax, that was not my intention but this is how it appeared to me. I maintain that there was many reasons why this article didn't belong to Wikipedia. In addition to cut and paste all the insanities of the Guiness Book of Records doesn't seem to be a very sound thing to do, especially an edition dating back to 1971 in which most information is probably out of date! Blastwizard 23:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, you show that you haven't read the article, or it seems the article history. It wasn't a cut and paste, I didn't write it (as you seem to imply), and the information that is relevant is that it was in the 1971 Book of Records as the longest chemical word. That the record is out of date (in more than one way) is irrelevant, it is still a fact that it was referred to as the longest word in that edition. Or should we remove all references to all historical events - as they are out of date now? -- sannse (talk) 00:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I read the article and I understand your point, but lots of things have been written in the Guiness Book of Records and don't belong to Wikipedia. If I follow your logic I would be able to write an article for every records in the Guiness Book of Records since it is published. I don't think so! In addition, the fact that this longest word business was in the Guiness Book of Records, does not make it an historical event, I hope you don't put the Battle of Britain to the same level as this article. Historical events are never out of date either. At best, this article was anecdotal, on the contrary to an historical event which consequences shape the present. Blastwizard 01:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)