Xylulose
Xylulose is a ketopentose, a monosaccharide containing five carbon atoms, and including a ketone functional group. It has the chemical formula . In nature, it occurs in both the L- and D-enantiomers. 1-Deoxyxylulose is a precursor to terpenes via the DOXP pathway. Pathology L-Xylulose accumulates in the urine in patients with pentosuria, due to a deficiency in L-xylulose reductase. Since L-xylulose is a reducing sugar like D-glucose, pentosuria patients have been wrongly diagnosed in the past to be diabetic Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the cells of th .... References {{Carbohydrates Ketopentoses Furanoses ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pentosuria
Pentosuria, a component of Garrod’s tetrad, is a condition where the sugar L-xylulose, a pentose, presents in the urine in unusually high concentrations. It was characterized as an inborn error of carbohydrate metabolism in 1908. It is associated with a deficiency of L-xylulose reductase, necessary for xylitol metabolism. L-Xylulose is a reducing sugar, so it may give false diagnosis of diabetes, as it is found in high concentrations in urine. However glucose metabolism is normal in people with pentosuria, and they are not diabetic. Patients of pentosuria have a low concentration of the sugar d-xyloketose. Using phenyl pentosazone crystals, phloroglucin reaction, and absorption spectrum, pentose can be traced back as the reducing substance in urine, with those that have pentosuria. Research has shown that pentosuria appears in 3 forms. The most widely studied is essential pentosuria, where a couple of grams of L-xylulose are released into a person's system daily. L-xylulos ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ketopentose
In chemistry, a pentose is a monosaccharide (simple sugar) with five carbon atoms. The chemical formula of many pentoses is , and their molecular weight is 150.13 g/mol.-Ribose . PubChem compound webpage, accessed on 2010-02-06. Pentoses are very important in biochemistry. Ribose is a constituent of RNA, and the related molecule, deoxyribose, is a constituent of DNA. Phosphorylation, Phosphorylated pentoses are important products of the pentose phosphate pathway, most importantly ribose 5-phosphate (R5P), which is used in the synthesis of nucleotides and nucleic acids. Like some other monosaccharides, pentoses exist in two forms, open-chain (linear) or closed-chain (cyclic), that easily convert into each other in water solutions. The linear form of a pentose, which usually exists only in solutions, has an o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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L-xylulose Reductase
Dicarbonyl/L-xylulose reductase, also known as carbonyl reductase II, is an enzyme that in human is encoded by the DCXR gene located on chromosome 17. Structure The DCXR gene encodes a membrane protein that is approximately 34 kDa in size and composed of 224 amino acids. The protein is highly expressed in the kidney and localizes to the cytoplasmic membrane. Function DCSR catalyzes the reduction of several L-xylylose as well as a number of pentoses, tetroses, trioses, alpha-dicarbonyl compounds. The enzyme is involved in carbohydrate metabolism, glucose metabolism, the uronate cycle and may play a role in the water absorption and cellular osmoregulation in the proximal renal tubules by producing xylitol. In enzymology, an L-xylulose reductase () is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction :xylitol + NADP+ \rightleftharpoons L-xylulose + NADPH + H+ Thus, the two substrates of this enzyme are xylitol and NADP+, whereas its 3 products are L-xylulose, NADPH, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monosaccharide
Monosaccharides (from Greek '' monos'': single, '' sacchar'': sugar), also called simple sugars, are the simplest forms of sugar and the most basic units (monomers) from which all carbohydrates are built. Chemically, monosaccharides are polyhydroxy aldehydes with the formula or polyhydroxy ketones with the formula with three or more carbon atoms. They are usually colorless, water- soluble, and crystalline organic solids. Contrary to their name (sugars), only some monosaccharides have a sweet taste. Most monosaccharides have the formula (CH2O)''x'' (though not all molecules with this formula are monosaccharides). Examples of monosaccharides include glucose (dextrose), fructose (levulose), and galactose. Monosaccharides are the building blocks of disaccharides (such as sucrose, lactose and maltose) and polysaccharides (such as cellulose and starch). The table sugar used in everyday vernacular is itself a disaccharide sucrose comprising one molecule of each of the two ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carbon
Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 electrons. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up about 0.025 percent of Earth's crust. Three Isotopes of carbon, isotopes occur naturally, carbon-12, C and carbon-13, C being stable, while carbon-14, C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of 5,700 years. Carbon is one of the timeline of chemical element discoveries#Pre-modern and early modern discoveries, few elements known since antiquity. Carbon is the 15th abundance of elements in Earth's crust, most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the abundance of the chemical elements, fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon's abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, and its unusual abi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Atom
Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element. Atoms are extremely small, typically around 100 picometers across. A human hair is about a million carbon atoms wide. Atoms are smaller than the shortest wavelength of visible light, which means humans cannot see atoms with conventional microscopes. They are so small that accurately predicting their behavior using classical physics is not possible due to quantum mechanics, quantum effects. More than 99.94% of an atom's mass is in the nucleus. Protons hav ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ketone
In organic chemistry, a ketone is an organic compound with the structure , where R and R' can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group (a carbon-oxygen double bond C=O). The simplest ketone is acetone (where R and R' are methyl), with the formula . Many ketones are of great importance in biology and industry. Examples include many sugars (ketoses), many steroids, ''e.g.'', testosterone, and the solvent acetone. Nomenclature and etymology The word ''ketone'' is derived from ''Aketon'', an old German word for ''acetone''. According to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, ketone names are derived by changing the suffix ''-ane'' of the parent alkane to ''-anone''. Typically, the position of the carbonyl group is denoted by a number, but traditional nonsystematic names are still generally used for the most important ketones, for example acetone and benzophenone. These nonsystematic names are considered retained IUPAC names, although some introdu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Functional Group
In organic chemistry, a functional group is any substituent or moiety (chemistry), moiety in a molecule that causes the molecule's characteristic chemical reactions. The same functional group will undergo the same or similar chemical reactions regardless of the rest of the molecule's composition. This enables systematic prediction of chemical reactions and behavior of chemical compounds and the design of chemical synthesis. The Reactivity (chemistry), reactivity of a functional group can be modified by other functional groups nearby. Functional group interconversion can be used in retrosynthetic analysis to plan organic synthesis. A functional group is a group of atoms in a molecule with distinctive Chemical property, chemical properties, regardless of the other atoms in the molecule. The atoms in a functional group are linked to each other and to the rest of the molecule by covalent bonds. For repeating units of polymers, functional groups attach to their Chemical polarity, nonp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chemical Formula
A chemical formula is a way of presenting information about the chemical proportions of atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound or molecule, using chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as parentheses, dashes, brackets, commas and ''plus'' (+) and ''minus'' (−) signs. These are limited to a single typographic line of symbols, which may include subscripts and superscripts. A chemical formula is not a chemical name since it does not contain any words. Although a chemical formula may imply certain simple chemical structures, it is not the same as a full chemical structural formula. Chemical formulae can fully specify the structure of only the simplest of molecules and chemical substances, and are generally more limited in power than chemical names and structural formulae. The simplest types of chemical formulae are called '' empirical formulae'', which use letters and numbers indicating the numerical ''proportions'' of atoms ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Enantiomer
In chemistry, an enantiomer (Help:IPA/English, /ɪˈnænti.əmər, ɛ-, -oʊ-/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''ih-NAN-tee-ə-mər''), also known as an optical isomer, antipode, or optical antipode, is one of a pair of molecular entities which are mirror images of each other and non-superposable. Enantiomer molecules are like right and left hands: one cannot be superposed onto the other without first being converted to its mirror image. It is solely a relationship of chirality (chemistry), chirality and the permanent three-dimensional relationships among molecules or other chemical structures: no amount of re-orientation of a molecule as a whole or conformational isomerism, conformational change converts one chemical into its enantiomer. Chemical structures with chirality rotate plane-polarized light. A mixture of equal amounts of each enantiomer, a ''racemic mixture'' or a ''racemate'', does not rotate light. Stereoisomers include both enantiomers and diastereomers. Diaste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terpene
Terpenes () are a class of natural products consisting of compounds with the formula (C5H8)n for n ≥ 2. Terpenes are major biosynthetic building blocks. Comprising more than 30,000 compounds, these unsaturated hydrocarbons are produced predominantly by plants, particularly Pinophyta, conifers. In plants, terpenes and terpenoids are important mediators of ecological biological interaction, interactions, while some insects use some terpenes as a form of defense. Other functions of terpenoids include cell growth modulation and plant elongation, light harvesting and photoprotection, and membrane permeability and fluidity control. Terpenes are classified by the number of carbons: monoterpenes (C10), sesquiterpenes (C15), diterpenes (C20), as examples. The terpene alpha-pinene is a major component of the common solvent, turpentine. The one terpene that has major applications is natural rubber (i.e., polyisoprene). The possibility that other terpenes could be used as precursors to pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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DOXP Pathway
The non-mevalonate pathway—also appearing as the mevalonate-independent pathway and the 2-''C''-methyl-D-erythritol 4-phosphate/1-deoxy-D-xylulose 5-phosphate (MEP/DOXP) pathway—is an alternative metabolic pathway for the biosynthesis of the isoprenoid precursors isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl pyrophosphate (DMAPP). The currently preferred name for this pathway is the MEP pathway, since MEP is the first committed metabolite on the route to IPP. Isoprenoid precursor biosynthesis The mevalonate pathway (MVA pathway or HMG-CoA reductase pathway) and the MEP pathway are metabolic pathways for the biosynthesis of isoprenoid precursors: IPP and DMAPP. Whereas plants use both MVA and MEP pathway, most organisms only use one of the pathways for the biosynthesis of isoprenoid precursors. In plant cells IPP/DMAPP biosynthesis via the MEP pathway takes place in plastid organelles, while the biosynthesis via the MVA pathway takes place in the cytoplasm. Most gram-negati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |