• Corpus ID: 41292340

The structure of carbohydrates and of vitamin C

@inproceedings{1999TheSO,
  title={The structure of carbohydrates and of vitamin C},
  author={},
  year={1999}
}

• Published 1999
• Chemistry

Twenty years ago it could have been said that the wealth of natural products which comprise the carbohydrate group was bewildering in its complexity. Such materials as cellulose, glycogen, and starch seemed almost beyond the range of structural investigation. It was recognized that these products were built up somehow of simple sugars, particularly glucose. But our knowledge of the mode of combination of two or more glucose molecules was doubtful and insecure. This could scarcely have been otherwise inasmuch as it was not until 1925 that a precise structural model of any sugar was clearly and finally determined. The expressions used by Emil Fischer give us the stereochemical relationship of the hexoses and pentoses which he represented as open-chain aldehydes and ketones and these configurational conceptions will always be regarded as classical. It must now be said, however, that sugars of the hexose and pentose series, whether occurring as free isolated substances or assembled as the constituent parts of complex carbohydrates, conform to one of two simple structural models which are related either to pyran or to furan.