Carbohydrates hemiacetals

Glycoside (Section 25.4) An acetal formed by the reaction of a carbohydrate hemiacetal with an alcohol in the presence of acid. 

The reverse situation, in which the phenol acts as the nucleophile attacking activated carbohydrate hemiacetals, has also found several practical applications preparing 0-aryl glycosides [388]. However, this situation implies an attack at the anomeric carbon and not at the anomeric oxygen. 

Tf20 in combination with sulfoxides lacking a-protons, such as diphenylsulfoxide or dibenzothiophene sulfoxide, generates a sulfoxonium triflate, which is capable of effecting the formation of glycosides from carbohydrate hemiacetals and oxygen nucleophiles. This is a dehydrative glycosylation, and appears to proceed by way of a sulfoxonium intermediate (eq 72). ... 

Aldoses incorporate two functional groups C=0 and OH which are capable of react mg with each other We saw m Section 17 8 that nucleophilic addition of an alcohol function to a carbonyl group gives a hemiacetal When the hydroxyl and carbonyl groups are part of the same molecule a cyclic hemiacetal results as illustrated m Figure 25 3 Cyclic hemiacetal formation is most common when the ring that results is five or SIX membered Five membered cyclic hemiacetals of carbohydrates are called furanose forms SIX membered ones are called pyranose forms The nng carbon that is derived... 

Aldoses exist almost exclusively as their cyclic hemiacetals very little of the open chain form is present at equilibrium To understand their structures and chemical reac tions we need to be able to translate Fischer projections of carbohydrates into their cyclic hemiacetal forms Consider first cyclic hemiacetal formation m d erythrose To visualize furanose nng formation more clearly redraw the Fischer projection m a form more suited to cyclization being careful to maintain the stereochemistry at each chirality center... 

Structural drawings of carbohydrates of this type are called Haworth formulas, after the British chemist Sir Walter Norman Haworth (St Andrew s University and the University of Birmingham) Early m his career Haworth contributed to the discovery that carbohydrates exist as cyclic hemiacetals rather than m open chain forms Later he col laborated on an efficient synthesis of vitamin C from carbohydrate precursors This was the first chemical synthesis of a vitamin and provided an inexpensive route to its prepa ration on a commercial scale Haworth was a corecipient of the Nobel Prize for chem istry m 1937... 

Because six membered rings are normally less strained than five membered ones pyranose forms are usually present m greater amounts than furanose forms at equilib rium and the concentration of the open chain form is quite small The distribution of carbohydrates among their various hemiacetal forms has been examined by using H and NMR spectroscopy In aqueous solution for example d ribose is found to contain the various a and p furanose and pyranose forms m the amounts shown m Figure 25 5 The concentration of the open chain form at equilibrium is too small to measure directly Nevertheless it occupies a central position m that mterconversions of a and p anomers and furanose and pyranose forms take place by way of the open chain form as an inter mediate As will be seen later certain chemical reactions also proceed by way of the open chain form... 

Although carbohydrates exist almost entirely as cyclic hemiacetals m aqueous solution they are m rapid equilibrium with their open chain forms and most of the reagents that react with simple aldehydes and ketones react m an analogous way with the carbonyl functional groups of carbohydrates... 

The carbonyl group of carbohydrates can be reduced to an alcohol function Typi cal procedures include catalytic hydrogenation and sodium borohydnde reduction Lithium aluminum hydride is not suitable because it is not compatible with the solvents (water alcohols) that are required to dissolve carbohydrates The products of carbohydrate reduc tion are called alditols Because these alditols lack a carbonyl group they are of course incapable of forming cyclic hemiacetals and exist exclusively m noncyclic forms... 

Carbohydrates are marvelous molecules In most of them every carbon bears a functional group and the nature of the functional groups changes as the molecule mterconverts between open chain and cyclic hemiacetal forms Any approach to understanding carbohydrates must begin with structure... 

Most carbohydrates exist as cyclic hemiacetals Those with five membered rings are called furanose forms those with six membered rings are called pyranose forms... 

Furanose form (Section 25 6) Five membered nng ansing via cyclic hemiacetal formation between the carbonyl group and a hydroxyl group of a carbohydrate... 

Mutarotation (Section 25 8) The change in optical rotation that occurs when a single form of a carbohydrate is allowed to equilibrate to a mixture of isomeric hemiacetals... 

When this sequence is applied to carbohydrates, the first step takes place intramoleai-larly to yield a cyclic hemiacetal. The second step is intermolecular, requires an alcohol R"OH as a reactant, and proceeds readily only in the presence of an acid catalyst. An oxygen-stabilized carbocation is an intermediate. 

A particular- carbohydrate can interconvert between furanose and pyranose for-rns and between the a and p configuration of each for-m. The change from one for-m to an equilibrium mixture of all the possible hemiacetals causes a change in optical rotation called mutarotation. 

Acetal and hemiacetal groups are particularly common in carbohydrate chemistry. Glucose, for instance, is a polyhydroxy aldehyde that undergoes an internal nucleophilic addition reaction and exists primarily as a cyclic hemiacetal. 

If the carbonyl and the hydroxyl group are in the same molecule, an intramolecular nucleophilic addition can take place, leading to the formation of a cyclic hemiacetal. Five- and six-membered cyclic hemiacetals are relatively strain-free and particularly stable, and many carbohydrates therefore exist in an equilibrium between open-chain and cyclic forms. Glucose, for instance, exists in aqueous solution primarily in the six-membered, pyranose form resulting from intramolecular nucleophilic addition of the -OH group at C5 to the Cl carbonyl group (Figure 25.4). The name pyranose is derived from pyran, the name of the unsaturated six-membered cyclic ether. 

The (non-detachable) prefix carba- signifies replacement of a heteroatom by carbon in general natural product nomenclature [26], and may be applied to replacement of the hemiacetal ring oxygen in carbohydrates if there is a desire to stress homomorphic relationships. If the original heteroatom is unnumbered, the new carbon atom is assigned the locant of the non-anomeric adjacent skeletal atom, with suffix a . 

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