Other Applications of Hydrogen Fluoride

Hydrogen fluoride can also be used to remove sugars from cell walls of plants. By immersing blocks of wood in a series of increasing concentra- 

Hydrogen fluoride has occasionally been used to aid in the determination of structures of nucleic acids. In proving the structure of 3, 5 -cyclic adenosine monophosphate, anhydrous hydrogen fluoride was used to obtain 

2-O-methyl-D-ribose from the methylated, cyclic AMP. The phosphoric ester linkages and the iV-glycosylic linkage to the adenine were rapidly cleaved at room temperature. 

At lower temperatures for brief reaction times, it appears that DNA is stable. After a 5-minute treatment of intact, dried yeast-cells in hydrogen fluoride at 0°, DNA could be easily extracted, and even used to transform 

Although the use of anhydrous hydrogen fluoride in structural carbohydrate chemistry has been limited to a small number of research groups and has only been frequent during the past 10 years, a great deal of information has been derived from it. We trust that this article will bring the potential of hydrogen fluoride to the attention of many more structural carbohydrate chemists and biochemists. 

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