Pyranose

Pyranose is a collective term for carbohydrates that have a chemical structure that includes a six-membered ring consisting of five carbon atoms and one oxygen atom. There may be other carbons external to the ring. The name derives from its similarity to the oxygen heterocycle pyran, but the pyranose ring does not have double bonds. A pyranose in which the anomeric OH at C(l) has been converted into an OR group is called a pyranoside.

Formation

The pyranose ring is formed by the reaction of the hydroxyl group on carbon 5 (C-5) of a sugar with the aldehyde at carbon 1. This forms an intramolecular hemiacetal. If reaction is between the C-4 hydroxyl and the aldehyde, a furanose is formed instead. The pyranose form is thermodynamically more stable than the furanose form, which can be seen by the distribution of these two cyclic forms in solution.

History

Hermann Emil Fischer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1902) for his work in determining the structure of the D-aldohexoses. However, the linear, free-aldehyde structures that Fischer proposed represent a very minor percentage of the forms that hexose sugars adopt in solution. It was Edmund Hirst and Clifford Purves, in the research group of Walter Haworth, who conclusively determined that the hexose sugars preferentially form a pyranose, or six-membered, ring. Haworth drew the ring as a flat hexagon with groups above and below the plane of the ring – the Haworth projection.