Structures of Monosaccharides

Hexose monosaccharides can form both five- and six-membered rings. In most cases, the six-membered ring structure is more stable, but fructose is an important example of a hexose that is more stable as a five-membered ring. The structure ofy6-fhictose is shown in Figure 13-17. Notice that there are — CH2 OH fragments bonded to two positions of this five-membered ring. Examples and explore the structures of monosaccharides in more detail. 

The structure of monosaccharides is often written in the acycUc form although only very minor amounts of it ever occur in that form. Because the interconversions are rapid, the carbonyl groups of sugars can and do react both as if they are free and as if they are in a hemiacetal ring form. 

Figure 1.10 Examples of the cyclic and straight chain structures of monosaccharides. The carbon of the carbonyl group has the lowest locant...

Figure 5.5. Search result of monosaccharide database. The web site provides 2D and 3D structures of monosaccharides. The chair conformer of methyl 2-amino-2-deoxy-/ -D-glucopyranoside in which all hydroxy (1-methoxy and 2-amino) groups are equatorial is displayed.

Haworth projection common way of representing the cyclic structure of monosaccharides using a three-dimensional perspective. 

William Mills described a similar convention to depict the structures of monosaccharides. While the ring atoms of the Haworth projections are oriented perpendicular to the paper, Mills chose to depict the carbon skeleton in the plane of the paper (Fig. 1.5). Although Fischer, Haworth, and Mills projections are useful tools for depicting the structures of carbohydrates, the planar nature of these representations does not provide an accurate picture of the actual geometry of the molecules. In order to understand carbohydrate function and reactivity, recognition of each distinct conformation and the properties associated with it is required [15]. 

Apart from sotolon, the other compounds in Fig. 5 can be explained as the products of a Maillard reaction, and their carbon skeletons simply originate from the active Amadori intermediate in other words, they still preserve the straight carbon chain structure of monosaccharides. In spite of being a simple Cg lactone, sotolon has a branched carbon skeleton, which implies another formation process in the Maillard reaction. Sulser e al.(6) reported that ethyl sotolon (ll) was prepared from threonine with sulfuric acid, and that 2-oxobutyric acid, a degradation product of threonine, was a better starting material to obtain II. This final reaction is a Claisen type of condensation, which would proceed more smoothly under alkaline conditions. As we(lO) obtained II from 2-oxobutyric acid (see figure 6) with a high yield in the presence of potassium carbonate in ethanol, a mixed condensation of 2-oxobutyric and 2-oxo-propanoic (pyruvic) acids was attempted under the same conditions, and a mixture of sotolon (22% yield) and II were obtained however, the... 

Compare the structures of monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. Which has the largest molecular mass The smallest ... 

Figure 1. Some examples of the structures of monosaccharides occurring in mammalian glycoconjugates (glycoproteins, glycolipids, and proteoglycans).

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