Sugar polysaccharide saccharide

The monosaccharide D-( + )-glucose, an aldohexose, is formed by plants in photosynthesis and is converted to the polysaccharides cellulose and starch. Simple saccharides are called sugars. Polysaccharides are hydrolyzable to monosaccharides e.g., a mol of trisaccharide gives 3 mol of monosaccharides. 

Polyhydroxy Aldehydes and Ketones Carbohydrates are a class of organic biopolymers which consist of polyhydroxy aldehydes and ketones, their derivatives and polymers. Other terms for carbohydrates include sugars and saccharides. A single monomer unit is called a monosaccharide several units are referred to as an oligosaccharide larger polymers are called polysaccharides. The simplest carbohydrates are glyceraldehyde and dihydroxyacetone. 

By far the majority of carbohydrate material in nature occurs in the form of polysaccharides. By our definition, polysaccharides include not only those substances composed only of glycosidically linked sugar residues but also molecules that contain polymeric saccharide structures linked via covalent bonds to amino acids, peptides, proteins, lipids, and other structures. 

Early in the 1950s, Stacey was successful in his negotiations to have a 60Co source of y-rays installed in his laboratory. Then, in collaboration with Barker and Bourne, a series of investigations of the effects of y-radiation on saccharides was started. Both polymer formation from simple sugars and the degradation of polysaccharides were studied. 

Although the isolation and identification of new disaccharides, tri-saccharides and tetrasaccharides and their derivatives, either by acid hydrolysis or by controlled oxidative degradation, " would be of great help in these studies it would appear to be worth while to develop other indirect methods of approach involving the use of enzymes capable of effecting scission at specific points in the molecular complex. Better methods for the quantitative separation of sugars and their derivatives are in the process of development and it is not unlikely that in the near future it will be possible to derive formulas not only for plant gums but for the many related complex polysaccharides. 

The periodate oxidation of carbohydrates, an important analytical technique, has been reviewed earlier in this Series.73 The dialdehydes obtained on periodate oxidation of polysaccharides have also been discussed.74 The requisite for the degradations to be discussed here is that part of the sugar residues in a polysaccharide are not oxidized by periodate and can be obtained separated from the oxidized residues as mono-, oligo-, or poly-saccharide derivatives after some chemical treatment. Characterization of these products may then give significant structural information. 

Wohl4 was the first to refer to the formation of higher saccharides by the action of acids on monosaccharides as reversion. This process, the acid-catalyzed formation of glycosidic bonds between sugar residues, constitutes the most rudimentary form of condensation polymerization. Reversion of oligosaccharides has also been observed. 0 The relationships between the hydrolysis of polysaccharides and the reversion of mono- and oligo-saccha-rides is illustrated for amylose in Fig. 1. 

Chapters 17 through 21 deal with carbohydrate-enzyme systems. Hehre presents some new ideas on the action of amylases. Kabat presents some new immunochemical studies on the carbohydrate moiety of certain water-soluble blood-group substances and their precursor antigens. Hassid reviews the role of sugar phosphates in the biosynthesis of complex saccharides. Pazur and co-workers present information obtained by isotopic techniques on the nature of enzyme-substrate complexes in the hydrolysis of polysaccharides. Gabriel presents a common mechanism for the production of 6-deoxyhexoses. An intermediate nucleoside-5 -(6-deoxyhexose-4-ulose pyrophosphate) is formed in each of the syntheses. 

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