Talk:Saponin

Rambutan
It's also present in Rambutan, a tropical fruit that looks a lot like Lychee.

Is all the information given is correct and authenthic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.41.109.2 (talk) 11:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

[Saporin]
Is this related to Saporin? if so, it may be worth linking the articles. --YakbutterT (talk) 00:15, 5 March 2010 (UTC)


 * No!!! saporin and saponin are completely different molecules from different plant species, Saponaria offcianalis in the case of SAPORIN and many many different plant species in the case of saponins. Saporin is a protein with a molecular weight of 29.5kD that acts as an N-glycoside enzyme that specifically depurinates 28S ribosomal RNA thus irreversibly inactivating protein synthesis in the cell. Saponins are completely different types of molecules based on either a sterol or aglycone core to which one or two carbohydrate side chains are appended. SAPORIN and SAPONIN have very similar names(and confusing sometimes to even those of us who work with both molecules in the lab!) because they form "soapy" like films in water and of course the Latin for soap is sapo hence the names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.234.163 (talk) 19:09, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

attention non native english speakers
if you are confused by the intro, it is not your fault: it is terrible, almost incomprehensible writing - something a 14 year old might put together — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.195.10.169 (talk) 19:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

wrong picture
There is wrong picture, solanin is an alkaloid, not saponin. Vojtěch Zavadil (talk) 07:21, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Solanin is both an alkaloid and a saponin. ChemNerd (talk) 14:25, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Nutritional section seems POV
Much of text could apply to almost anything - could delete most of the section after the  ? - Rod57 (talk) 19:32, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
 * "As is often the case with wide-ranging commercial therapeutic claims for natural products": Before I even noticed the POV template, I thought the editor is clearly ascending a soap(berry)box here. While I agree that many commercial natural product studies are questionable or minimally conclusive. This article is not the place to criticize them in general.


 * Most of the second paragraph should all go without saying. (Studies should be reviewed, Doses must be regulated, Action must be cautious).   This all belongs in an article about nutritional supplements, not Saponin in particular.


 * I would save "There are very limited agency-approved roles for saponins in human therapy." (without the "it appears" qualifier) if someone could cite it.
 * Phildonnia (talk) 19:01, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Saponins in/on grains
Why are grains that contain saponins not mentioned? Quinoa, millet and many more have saponins for protection against bugs etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lityf (talk • contribs) 13:15, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Saponins in/on grains
Why are grains that contain saponins not mentioned? Quinoa, millet and many more have saponins for protection against bugs etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lityf (talk • contribs) 13:28, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Incomprehensible lead (jargon)
The lead is incomprehensible to anyone without a PhD in organic chemistry. I have a college-level education in chemistry and can make only vague sense of it. There are 9 words of chemical jargon in the lead paragraph, plus two technical terms, “phenomenologically” and “aqueous” that the average reader (high school level) probably won’t know the meaning of. The lede sentence, while it contains no jargon, is the epitomy of vapidity.

How about a sentence like, “Saponins are foamy additives that give a mug of root beer its characteristic head, among other dietary and medicinal uses.” That is very accessible though not very precise, and most of what anyone except a chemist needs to know. Precision can come later.

I note that another editor above warns that the article is not comprehensible to non-Englitch speakers. Maybe he thought it was written in a foreign language (actually, it is - chemical jargon). It is not comprehensible to native speakers of Englitch, either.

It needs a basic redraft, moving the jargon to a technical sidebar or footnote.Sbalfour (talk) 11:11, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Chemical structure
This section has a daunting 32 jargon terms. In addition it does not describe the process of biosynthesis as the title implies, and several times references a diagram not in the section. I suspect the entire section was copyvio-ed, but not the image, due to Wikipedia’s heavy scrutiny of images. I’m going to spend some time investigating, but even if it’s original to the encyclopedia, it’s grossly inaccessible to anyone but a professional organic chemist. Saponins are indeed a rather broad set of structures, but professional chemists do not get their info from Wikipedia, and I do think that a diagram with examples would speak a thousand words. Either way, the section needs redrafted to dump the chemical jargon or relegate it to a technical footnote. Sbalfour (talk) 14:13, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I've significantly shortened and edited the section, so copyvio issues are moot. 32 chemical jargon words/phrases have been reduced to 20, but that's still 5 times too many. A redraft is clearly needed, to make the section accessible to someone with a scientific college degree but little or no formal chemistry (that would be a person like me). It could be plausibly understandable to someone with a high school diploma and general science knowledge, and still be as accurate as it needs to be, written in general English diction. Sbalfour (talk) 17:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions: "sugar" instead of "saccharide", "fat soluble" instead of "lipophilic", and etc.  A few words, like steroid, terpene, and sugar, would need an extended definition in the context of molecular structure, because few non-chemists have any usable idea what these represent.Sbalfour (talk) 17:46, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I've retitled the section and moved it last - the article is not about chemistry, and the tone isn't technical, so this section isjust kind of an interjection and shouldn't be the first (most important) section of the text. Probably, it can just be moved into a technical footnote - readers (and editors) shouldn't be focusing on this section.Sbalfour (talk) 13:31, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I redrafted once again the whole section to reduce the number of chemical jargon terms, but there's still way too many. My purpose is to make the section accessible enough to ordinary folk that they might read it and learn something they'd otherwise have glossed over. So there's more work to go, and it could use a technical glossary, maybe in a footnote? Sbalfour (talk) 14:30, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

After thinking about it, what we really have here is part of an article on chemistry Saponins (chemistry) wedged into an article on plant extracts and uses. There's hardly enough text to split the article now, but some time in the future, that's probably what'll be done, and that solves the accessibility problem - someone reading a chemistry article expects technical jargon and understands it. Sbalfour (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Soap
For centuries, the only relevance of saponins was their use in soap making. Yet the article contains no info on how the relevant plants are identified, what parts are used, and how one gets from weeds in the backwoods to a bar of soap. In large parts of today's world, that’s still the most relevant use of saponins. The encyclopedia is not a how-to manual, but a substantive overview of this seems a very valuable addition to the article. Sbalfour (talk) 18:19, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

To add to article
Basic information to add to this article: the pronunciation(s) of this word. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 18:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Saponin from celery physical properties
What r they 219.74.185.117 (talk) 07:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)