noun. A polymer consisting of at least 2 and as many as 100 monomers.

noun. A molecule composed of a small number of linked monomer units; a short polymer; -- compounds called oligomers have less than one hundred monomer units and usually less than thirty. Oligomers of increasing length are called dimer, trimer, tetramer, pentamer, hexamer, heptamer, octamer, nonamer, decamer, etc. In colloquial laboratory jargon, they may also be referred to as nine-mer, ten-mer, eleven-mer, twelve-mer, etc., especially for oligomers of greater than eight units.

noun. A compound intermediate between a monomer and a polymer, normally having a specified number of units between about five and a hundred.

"I concluded that H3 and H4 must form a dimer, and I thought I might crystallize and solve the structure of this unique histone oligomer."

decamer  dimer  dodecamer  eicosamer  heptadecamer  

oligomeric  

decamer  dimer  eleven-mer  heptamer  hexamer