Monosaccharides and Disaccharides: - The Two Families of Monosaccharides Are Aldoses and Ketoses
Monosaccharides are colorless, crystalline solids that are freely soluble in water but insoluble in nonpolar sol vents. Most have a sweet taste. The backbones of common monosaccharide molecules are unbranched carbon chains in which all the carbon atoms are linked by single bonds. In the open-chain form, one of the carbon atoms is double-bonded to an oxygen atom to form a carbonyl group; each of the other carbon atoms has a hydroxyl group. If the carbonyl group is at an end of the carbon chain (that is, in an aldehyde group) the mono saccharide is an aldose; if the carbonyl group is at any other position (in a ketone group) the monosaccharide is a ketose. The simplest monosaccharides are the two three-carbon trioses: glyceraldehyde, an aldotriose, and dihydroxyacetone, a ketotriose (Fig. 7–1a). Monosaccharides with four, five, six, and seven car bon atoms in their backbones are called, respectively, tetroses, pentoses, hexoses, and heptoses. There are aldoses and ketoses of each of these chain lengths:
FIGURE 7–1 Representative monosaccharides. (a) Two trioses, an aldose and a ketose. The carbonyl group in each is shaded. (b)Two common hexoses. (c) The pentose components of nucleic acids. D-Ribose is a component of ribonucleic acid (RNA), and 2-deoxy-D ribose is a component of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
aldotetroses and ketotetroses, aldopentoses and ketopentoses, and so on. The hexoses, which include the aldohexose D-glucose and the ketohexose D-fructose (Fig. 7–1b), are the most common monosaccharides in nature. The aldopentoses D-ribose and 2-deoxy-D-ribose (Fig. 7–1c) are components of nucleotides and nucleic acids.
