My biology class and I have been on the topic of macromolecules for quite some time now. Chapter 2.3 of the Foundations to Biology Textbook says that lipids are not polymers, so they do not have monomers. It is also stated in our Macromolecules powerpoint.
Now here is what confused me. We did a macromolecules review assignment to prepare for our upcoming biology test. We had to match each macromolecule with its monomer, but that is when I noticed that "No monomer" wasn't an answer; glycerol and fatty acids were the only choices for the monomer of lipids.
This really had me baffled, I thought it must've been a typo on the assignment. So I decided to search it up. I searched for "What is the monomer of Lipids", and google said exactly: Lipids - polymers called diglycerides, and triglycerides; monomers are glycerol and fatty acids.
I still didn't believe what I was reading so instead I searched "What macromolecule doesn't have a monomer?", and google said exactly: Lipids are not true macromolecules because the monomers are not covalently bonded together. Simple lipids are composed of subunits made of fatty acids covalently bonded to a triose sugar – glycerol.
This really confused me because it was saying that Lipids aren't a true macromolecule. I did more research and found that Lipids are polymers, but that is not what we've been learning.
We've learned that Lipids aren't a polymer and that they have no monomer, but google is saying otherwise.
So what is it? Do they have monomers or not? Are Lipids actually considered a polymer?