Names and Structures of Carbohydrates

The saccharides have long and awkward names by the IUPAC system, consequently a highly specialized nomenclature system has been developed for carbohydrates. Because this system (and those like it for other natural products) is unlikely to be replaced by more systematic names, you will find it necessary to memorize some names and structures. It will help you to remember the meaning of names such as aldopentose and ketohexose, and to learn the names and details of the structures of glucose, fructose, and ribose. For the rest of the carbohydrates, the nonspecialist needs only to remember the kind of compounds that they are. 

The cyclic hemiacetal or hemiketal forms of aldo- and ketohexoses and pentoses are the predominant forms of these sugars, rather than the open-chain structures we have discussed to this point. Cyclic hemiacetals and hemiketals of carbohydrates that contain five-membered rings are called furanoses. Cyclic hemiacetals and hemiketals that contain six-membered rings are called pyranoses. These names are based the cyclic rings of furan and pyran. 

The overall scope of this book is the implementation and application of available theoretical and computational methods toward understanding the structure, dynamics, and function of biological molecules, namely proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and membranes. The large number of computational tools already available in computational chemistry preclude covering all topics, as Schleyer et al. are doing in The Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry [23]. Instead, we have attempted to create a book that covers currently available theoretical methods applicable to biomolecular research along with the appropriate computational applications. We have designed it to focus on the area of biomolecular computations with emphasis on the special requirements associated with the treatment of macromolecules. 

Some six hundred structures of naturally occurring carbogenic molecules appe on the pages which follow, together with the name of each compound and references to the original literature of successful chemical synthesis. Thus, Part Three of this book is effectively a key to the literature of chemical synthesis as applied to the complex molecules of nature. The survey does not include oligomeric or polymeric structures, such as peptides, proteins, carbohydrates and polynucleotides, which fall outside the scope of this book because they can be assembled by repetitive procedures. 

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