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Chemistry LibreTexts

Monosaccharides

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The most useful carbohydrate classification scheme divides the carbohydrates into groups according to the number of individual simple sugar units. Monosaccharides contain a single unit; disaccharides contain two sugar units; and polysaccharides contain many sugar units as in polymers - most contain glucose as the monosaccharide unit.

  • Fructose
    Fructose is more commonly found together with glucose and sucrose in honey and fruit juices. Fructose, along with glucose are the monosaccharides found in disaccharide, sucrose. Fructose is classified as a monosaccharide, the most important ketose sugar, a hexose, and is a reducing sugar.
  • Furanose
    If the molecule of the cyclic form of a monosaccharide has an oxygen-containing five-membered ring, the compound is called a furanose e.g. two of the four cyclic forms of D-fructose.
  • Galactose
    Galactose is more commonly found in the disaccharide, lactose or milk sugar. It is found as the monosaccharide in peas. Galactose is classified as a monosaccharide, an aldose, a hexose, and is a reducing sugar.
  • Glucose (Dextrose)
    Glucose is by far the most common carbohydrate and classified as a monosaccharide, an aldose, a hexose, and is a reducing sugar. It is also known as dextrose, because it is dextrorotatory (meaning that as an optical isomer is rotates plane polarized light to the right and also an origin for the D designation. Glucose is also called blood sugar as it circulates in the blood at a concentration of 65-110 mg/mL of blood.
  • Ribose
    Ribose and its related compound, deoxyribose, are the building blocks of the backbone chains in nucleic acids, better known as DNA and RNA. Ribose is used in RNA and deoxyribose is used in DNA. The deoxy- designation refers to the lack of an alcohol, -OH, group as will be shown in detail further down. Ribose and deoxyribose are classified as monosaccharides, aldoses, pentoses, and are reducing sugars.

Thumbnail Ball-and-stick model of the α-D-glucose molecule, C_6H_{12}O_6. (Public Domain; Ben Mills).

Monosaccharides is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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