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pyruvate

Hi all, I came across this while researching a gene sequencing assignment and I cannot find out what the curved/dashed line means. Can anyone tell me please? Is it something to do with the negative symbol? Thanks

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  • $\begingroup$ I’m guessing there is a duplicate lying around somewhere. If there is not, please leave open, answer accordingly and turn this into the dupe target. $\endgroup$
    – Jan
    Nov 19, 2017 at 13:54

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It actually hybrid form of the contributing resonance structures of the ion. The significance of the dashed line is that it shows delocalisation of negative charge over the two oxygen atoms.

enter image description here

Note that

  • Neither of the above two forms represent the actual compound

  • Actual compound is represented by the resonance hybrid :

enter image description here

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