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What is that squiggly on some molecule images I've seen?

JacksonsJWH-018

Greenlighter
Joined
Sep 8, 2010
Messages
16
Location
Florida
Hopefully this post is right for homeless threads as I don't think this is advanced enough for anywhere else. When I research chemicals on wiki and erowid I like to look at the molecules to expand my knowledge on the scientific aspect of drugs and I notice that some particular molecules use a squiggly line on it. Like amphetamine , and mephedrone but I don't see that on every mephedrone molecule image or amphetamine image. What is that? And also with MDPV where on erowid it's molecule image (I'm speaking 2d) has the avereage Pyrovalerone molecule with the methylenedioxy part on it but on wiki it shows somthing somewhat different. I just would like to know as a little fact to help me understand what I look at when I do.
 
It's denoting a stereocenter, and that that bond will determine the chiral configuration of the molecule (R or S and eventually dextro- or laevorotary effects). Hashed and wedged bonds are used to denote specific chiral configurations, squiggly lines just mean that there can be multiple configurations there and don't tell you specifically which isomer you have.

And on Wikipedia and Erowid the two MDPV diagrams look the same aside from the chirality being explicitly shown on Wiki.
 
It's denoting a stereocenter, and that that bond will determine the chiral configuration of the molecule (R or S and eventually dextro- or laevorotary effects). Hashed and wedged bonds are used to denote specific chiral configurations, squiggly lines just mean that there can be multiple configurations there and don't tell you specifically which isomer you have.
I've always assumed that, but confirmation is nice.
 
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