The Chemistry of Plant LifeThatcher, Roscoe Wilfred
Science
The Chemistry of Plant Life
Thatcher, Roscoe Wilfred
Botanical chemistry
=Sucrose= (cane sugar, beet sugar, maple sugar) is the ordinary "granulated
sugar" of commerce. It occurs widely distributed in plants, where it serves
as reserve food material. It is found in largest proportions in the stalks
of sugar cane, in the roots of certain varieties of beets, and in the
spring sap of maple trees, all of which serve as industrial sources for the
sugar. In the sugar cane, and beet-roots, it constitutes from 12 to 20 per
cent of the green weight of the tissue and from 75 to 90 per cent of the
soluble solids in the juice which can be expressed from it. Its universal
use as a sweetening agent is due to the combined facts that it crystallizes
readily out of concentrated solutions and, hence, can be easily
manufactured in solid form, and that it is sweeter than any other of the
common sugars except fructose.
Sucrose is a non-reducing sugar, forms no osazone, and is not directly
fermentable by yeast, although most species of yeasts contain an enzyme
which will hydrolyze sucrose into its component hexoses, which then readily
ferment.
When hydrolyzed by acids, or by the enzyme "invertase," it yields a mixture
of equal quantities of glucose and fructose. Sucrose is dextrorotatory, but
since fructose has a greater specific rotatory action to the left than
glucose has to the right, the mixture resulting from the hydrolysis of
sucrose is levorotatory. Since the hydrolysis of sucrose changes the
rotatory effect of the solution from the right to the left, the process is
usually called the "inversion" of sucrose, and the resultant mixture of
equal parts of glucose and fructose is called "invert sugar." As has been
pointed out, solutions of invert sugar become optically inactive when
heated to 82° C., because of the reduction in the rotatory power of
fructose due to the higher temperature.
The probable linkage of the two hexoses to form sucrose, in such a way as
to produce a non-reducing sugar, is illustrated in the following formula:
------O-------
| |
CH_{2}OH·CHOH·CH·CHOH·CHOH·CH
|
O
|
CH_{2}OH·CHOH·CHOH·CH·C·CH_{2}OH
\ /
O
=Trehalose= seems to serve as the reserve food for fungi in much the same
way that sucrose does for higher plants. It is composed of two molecules of
glucose linked together through the aldehyde group of each, as trehalose is
a non-reducing sugar. This linkage is illustrated in the following formula:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account