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:: Monday, October 16, 2006 ::
General Edification
Someone recently landed upon the blog by asking ask.com for the definition of monosaccharides.
I would heavily urge this person to increase their knowlege of the classical languages as used in the biomedical setting. For one who is knowlegable of such things, the definition comes easily by breaking down the parts: "mono-" comes from the Greek for one, while a "saccharide" is a sugar, so from such analysis we know that a monosaccharide is a single sugar. In the biological setting, a monosachharide is a sugar with one carbohydrate ring, such as glucose, galactose, fructose, or ribose among many others. Di- and trisaccharides have two and three sugars, respectively, bonded together. A common disaccharide is lactose. Beyond that the more complex sugars are generally referred to as polysaccharides, from "poly-" meaning "many." These include glycogen and starch, which contain many subunits without an exact number of them.
And now that I've glazed everybody's eyes over, it's time for something completely different.
:: The Squire 10:27 PM :: email this post :: ::
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