Aldoses pentoses

The simple sugars or monosaccharides are polyhydroxy aldehydes or ketones, and belong to Solubility Group II. They are termed tetroses, pentoses, hexoses. etc. according to the number of carbon atoms in the long chain constituting the molecule, and aldoses or ketoses if they are aldehydes or ketones. Most of the monosaccharides that occur in nature are pentoses and hexoses. 

In as far as other analytical methods are concerned, many specific reactions have been elaborated for the quantitative determination of 2-deoxy aldoses. 2-Deoxy-D-ribose (2-deoxy-D-erythro-pentose), a compound which was recognized early as playing an important role in biological systems, has been of particular interest. Overend and Stacey (43) have given a critical review of the methods available until 1952 for the estimation of 2-deoxy pentoses. A recent summary of specific methods for the identification and quantitative estimation of the different classes of deoxy sugars has been prepared by Dische (13). 

In connection with the Webb and Levy test, it should be mentioned that this test can also be applied to the estimation of all 2-deoxy aldoses, including those containing a terminal deoxy group, provided they have at least five carbon atoms in a straight chain 2-deoxy tetroses do not react (62). It has also been used for the estimation of 3-deoxy and 3, 6-di-deoxy hexoses, after their conversion to the corresponding 2-deoxy pentoses by removal of carbon 1 with periodate (24,25). 

Monosaccharides are those carbohydrates that cannot be hydrolyzed into simpler carbohydrates They may be classified as trioses, tetroses, pentoses, hex-oses, or heptoses, depending upon the number of carbon atoms and as aldoses or ketoses depending upon whether they have an aldehyde or ketone group. Examples are listed in Table 13-1. 

Glucose 6-phosphate is an important compound at the junction of several metabolic pathways (glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, the pentose phosphate pathway, glycogenosis, and glycogenolysis). In glycolysis, it is converted to fructose 6-phosphate by phosphohexose-isomerase, which involves an aldose-ketose isomerization. 

Figure 4.17 The trioses D-glyceraldehyde (aldose) and dihydroxyacetone (ketose), the pentose D-ribose, the hexoses D-galactose and D-glucose (aldoses) and the ketohexose D-fructose in their open chain forms. The configuration of the asymmetrical hydroxyl group on the carbon, the furthest away from the aldehyde or ketone group, determines the assignment of D- or L-configuration.

Only the most important of the large number of naturally occurring monosaccharides are mentioned here. They are classified according to the number of C atoms (into pentoses, hexoses, etc.) and according to the chemical nature of the carbonyl function into aldoses and ketoses. 

Aldose sugars make up a large part of the carbohydrate family, but the ones that are really worth knowing are part of the D-family. The simplest of these D-sugars is the triose glyceraldehyde. From there you have 2 tetroses, 4 pentoses, and 8 hexoses. Each of these aldose sugars has an enantiomer. 

Monosaccharides with four, five, six, and seven carbon atoms in their backbones are called, respectively, tetroses, pentoses, hexoses, and heptoses. There are aldoses and ketoses of each of these chain lengths ... 

FIGURE 7-1 Representative monosaccharides, (a) Two trioses, an aldose and a ketose. The carbonyl group in each is shaded, (b) Two common hexoses. (c) The pentose components of nucleic acids. D-Ribose is a component of ribonucleic acid (RNA), and 2-deoxy-o-ribose is a component of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). 

FIGURE 20-11 Transketolase-catalyzed reactions of the Calvin cycle, (a) General reaction catalyzed by transketolase the transfer of a two-carbon group, carried temporarily on enzyme-bound TPP, from a ketose donor to an aldose acceptor, (b) Conversion of a hexose and a triose to a four-carbon and a five-carbon sugar (step of Fig. 20-10). (c) Conversion of seven-carbon and three-carbon sugars to two pentoses (step of Fig. 20-10). 

The reactions enclosed within the shaded box of Fig. 17-14 do not give the whole story about the coupling mechanism. A phospho group was transferred from ATP in step a and to complete the hydrolysis it must be removed in some future step. This is indicated in a general way in Fig. 17-14 by the reaction steps d, e, and/. Step/represents the action of specific phosphatases that remove phospho groups from the seven-carbon sedoheptulose bisphosphate and from fructose bisphosphate. In either case the resulting ketose monophosphate reacts with an aldose (via transketolase, step g) to regenerate ribulose 5-phosphate, the C02 acceptor. The overall reductive pentose phosphate cycle (Fig. 17-14B) is easy to understand as a reversal of the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway in which the oxidative decarboxylation system of Eq. 17-12 is... 

He himself found that aldonolactones could be reduced with sodium amalgam to the aldoses. Thus, the way was opened to proceed from any pentose to the next higher aldose, which, as he soon showed, always arose in two stereoisomeric forms because of the introduction of a new asymmetric center. Another novel method created was the epimerization of aldonic... 

---