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Monosaccharides (from Greek monos: single, sacchar: sugar), also called simple sugars, are the simplest forms of sugar and the most basic units from which all carbohydrates are built. Chemically, monosaccharides are polyhydroxy aldehydes with the formula H-[CHOH] n-CHO or polyhydroxy ketones with the formula H-[CHOH] m-CO-[CHOH]
Longer chains of monosaccharides (>2) are not regarded as sugars and are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Starch is a glucose polymer found in plants, the most abundant source of energy in human food. Some other chemical substances, such as ethylene glycol, glycerol and sugar alcohols, may have a sweet taste but are not classified as ...
Natural saccharides are generally composed of simple carbohydrates called monosaccharides with general formula (CH 2 O) n where n is three or more. Examples of monosaccharides are glucose, fructose, and glyceraldehyde. [4] Polysaccharides, meanwhile, have a general formula of C x (H 2 O) y where x and y are usually large numbers between 200 and ...
Carbohydrates are generally divided into monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides depending on the number of sugar subunits. Maltose, with two sugar units, is a disaccharide, which falls under oligosaccharides. Glucose is a hexose: a monosaccharide containing six carbon atoms.
Monosaccharide nomenclature is the naming system of the building blocks of carbohydrates, the monosaccharides, which may be monomers or part of a larger polymer. Monosaccharides are subunits that cannot be further hydrolysed in to simpler units.
An oligosaccharide has both a reducing and a non-reducing end. The reducing end of an oligosaccharide is the monosaccharide residue with hemiacetal functionality, thereby capable of reducing the Tollens’ reagent, while the non-reducing end is the monosaccharide residue in acetal form, thus incapable of reducing the Tollens’ reagent. [2]
Glucose is a monosaccharide containing six carbon atoms and an aldehyde group, and is therefore an aldohexose. The glucose molecule can exist in an open-chain (acyclic) as well as ring (cyclic) form. Glucose is naturally occurring and is found in its free state in fruits and other parts of plants.
For biosynthetic reasons, most saccharides are almost always more abundant in nature as the "D"-form, or structurally analogous to D-glyceraldehyde.[note 1] However, L-arabinose is in fact more common than D-arabinose in nature and is found in nature as a component of biopolymers such as hemicellulose and pectin.