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In the Fischer projection, one of the two glucose isomers has the hydroxyl at left on C3, and at right on C4 and C5; while the other isomer has the reversed pattern. These specific monosaccharide names have conventional three-letter abbreviations, like "Glu" for glucose and "Thr" for threose.
The anhydroglucose unit is the fundamental repeating structure of cellulose and has three hydroxyl groups which can react to form acetate esters. The most common form of cellulose acetate fiber has an acetate group on approximately two of every three hydroxyls. This cellulose diacetate is known as secondary acetate, or simply as "acetate".
Glucose is a sugar with the molecular formula C 6 H 12 O 6.It is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, [4] a subcategory of carbohydrates.It is mainly made by plants and most algae during photosynthesis from water and carbon dioxide, using energy from sunlight.
Many properties of cellulose depend on its chain length or degree of polymerization, the number of glucose units that make up one polymer molecule. Cellulose from wood pulp has typical chain lengths between 300 and 1700 units; cotton and other plant fibers as well as bacterial cellulose have chain lengths ranging from 800 to 10,000 units. [6]
Chitin is the second most abundant polysaccharide in nature (behind only cellulose); an estimated 1 billion tons of chitin are produced each year in the biosphere. [1] It is a primary component of cell walls in fungi (especially filamentous and mushroom-forming fungi), the exoskeletons of arthropods such as crustaceans and insects, the radulae ...
Similar to the disaccharides, each glycosidic bond can be formed between any hydroxyl group on the component monosaccharides. Even if all three component sugars are the same (e.g., glucose ), different bond combinations ( regiochemistry ) and stereochemistry (alpha- or beta-) result in trisaccharides that are diastereoisomers with different ...
Oligosaccharides that participate in O-linked glycosylation are attached to threonine or serine on the hydroxyl group of the side chain. [7] O-linked glycosylation occurs in the Golgi apparatus, where monosaccharide units are added to a complete polypeptide chain. Cell surface proteins and extracellular proteins are O-glycosylated. [10]
Cellulose is a polymer made with repeated glucose units bonded together by beta-linkages. Humans and many animals lack an enzyme to break the beta-linkages, so they do not digest cellulose. Certain animals, such as termites can digest cellulose, because bacteria possessing the enzyme are present in their gut. Cellulose is insoluble in water.