Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Biochemistry and Chemical Biology Forum => Topic started by: Nab on May 08, 2018, 07:18:38 AM
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What would be the chemical formula of a polysaccharide made up of five glucose monomers? Can someone explain the solution ? :)
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What is the chemical formula of glucose? Do you know it, or can you quickly find it out, from your textbook, or class notes, or an online search?
What happens when we link two glucose sub-units together? Something must change, but what?
Now, having done two, can you expand to five? Is the problem really much different for four, or six, or 20, or 1,000?
I hope you don't mind my answering your question with more questions, but that's what we do here. Its part of the see Forum Rules{click} (http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=65859.0). You already accepted the rules when you signed up for our forum, and you have to follow them, whether you agree with them or not, or even if you're unaware of them.
We like to give you hints, so you learn for yourself, and are better off come exam time.
Something for you to work on: how are these five linked? All five in a row? Or is this branching, one of the five linked to two others?
And what does the formula give you? An accounting of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen? Why do you want that? Does it tell you or the next reader what is needed to be known? Contrast these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysaccharide#Storage_polysaccharides
[ETA] I spell better after coffee.
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I would focus on the chemical linkage that commonly holds one monosaccharide to the next in disaccharides and polysaccharides.