Monosaccharides Alditol

Methylation analysis Permethylation of intact oligosaccharides Hydrolysis of glycosidic linkages Reduction to monosaccharide alditols Acetylation of free hydroxyl groups previously involved in link-... 

Ing retention of "free" water in the resin. While the Ca -form resin retained even less "free" water, polyols and ribose were strongly retained due to complex formation. It was confirmed that the best separation of hexoses and pentoses is obtained with the Ca -form resin, while for sugar alcohols and polyols, the -form was best. Specific applications of cation-exchange resin columns include the determination of low levels of monosaccharides, alditols, and cyclltols in sheep plasma on a Ca -form column with u.v. detection at 190 nm, an extension of this involving collection... 

Much of the chemistry of monosaccharides is the familiar chemistry of alcohols and aldehydes/ketones. Thus, the hydroxyl groups of carbohydrates form esters and ethers. The carbonyl group of a monosaccharide can be reduced with NaBH4 to form an alditol, oxidized with aqueous Br2 to form an aldonic acid, oxidized with HNO3 to form an aldaric acid, oxidized enzymatically to form a uronic acid, or treated with an alcohol in the presence of acid to form a glycoside. Monosaccharides can also be chain-lengthened by the multistep Kiliani-Fischer synthesis and can be chain-shortened by the Wohl degradation. 

The polyhydric alcohols arising formally from the replacement of a carbonyl group in a monosaccharide with a CHOH group are termed alditols (see 2-Carb-19). 

The imino analogue of a monosaccharide may be named as an imino-substituted deoxy alditol. 

The content of neutral monosaccharides was determined after an acid hydrolysis, performed as follows with 72 % sulphuric acid for 1 hr at 30°C and then, after dilution to IM sulphuric acid, for another 3 hr s at 100°C. The determination was performed by GC analysis of the prepared alditol acetates (13,14)... 

Although many analyses are performed on alditol acetates (see Section VII, p. 56), in order to avoid the formation of multiple peaks, such a reduction is not practical when the mixture contains ketoses, notably fructose. Such analyses are mainly encountered with medical samples and in the examination of sugars occurring free in Nature. Furthermore, the peak-area ratios may be used as a means of identification, to check on the completeness of trimethylsilylation,67,89 and, despite the complex chromatograms obtained from trimethyl-silyl derivatives, they have the merit of being rapidly formed.89 For all of these reasons, improvements in the separation of monosaccharides as their trimethylsilyl derivatives continue to be of considerable importance. 

The fact that each monosaccharide may give more than one peak owing to the formation of anomeric derivatives has led to a search for means to eliminate this complication. The anomeric center may be removed either by conversion into the oxime5 or the nitrile,394,3943 by oxidation followed by formation of the lactone (see Section IX, p. 71), or by reduction to the alditol. The last method is simpler than oxidation, and the separation of alditols and of aldononitriles will be discussed here additional examples are given in Table V (see p. 119). The early work on the separation of alditols has been discussed by Bishop.4 The necessity of decomposing borate complexes... 

The more stable boron chelates can be isolated even from aqueous solution, whereas those of lower stabilities are only accessible from non-aqueous media. Catechol- and inositol-borates (3, 5 and 6) possesses a well-defined monomeric structure,75 whereas those obtained from monosaccharides and alditols are polymeric.121 A crystal structure determination122 has been carried out for sodium scyUo-inositol diborate (6). 

Hydrazones 10 derived from aldose monosaccharides (9) and 2-hydrazinopyrimidine (8) gave, upon oxidative cyclization with bromine in methanol, the corresponding 3-(alditol-l-yl)-l,2,4-triazolo[4,3-a]pyrim-idines 11 [97JHC(34)1115] (Scheme 7). 

Hence, the mass spectra of alditol acetates may be used to solve problems, just as for the monosaccharide series for example, for determination of molecular weight (indirectly, from the position Of M—59 and M—73), of the position of the deoxy unit, and so forth. 

Determination of the monosaccharide composition by gas chromatography of alditol acetates is commonly used for cell wall analyses because the procedure gives a single peak for each sugar. An alternative is to prepare trimethylsilyl (TMS) derivatives. However, these are easily hydrolyzed by moisture in the atmosphere and therefore should be analyzed in the gas chromatograph immediately, whereas alditol acetates are relatively more stable and could be rerun on the gas chromatograph the following day if required. 

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