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Concept
Sucrose
Summary
Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula C12H22O11.
For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refined from either sugarcane or sugar beet. Sugar mills – typically located in tropical regions near where sugarcane is grown – crush the cane and produce raw sugar which is shipped to other factories for refining into pure sucrose. Sugar beet factories are located in temperate climates where the beet is grown, and process the beets directly into refined sugar. The sugar-refining process involves washing the raw sugar crystals before dissolving them into a sugar syrup which is filtered and then passed over carbon to remove any residual colour. The sugar syrup is then concentrated by boiling under a vacuum and crystallized as the final purification process to produce crystals of pure sucrose that are clear, odorless, and sweet.
Sugar is often an added ingredient in food production and recipes. About 185 million tonnes of sugar were produced worldwide in 2017.
Sucrose is particularly dangerous as a risk factor for tooth decay because Streptococcus mutans bacteria convert it into a sticky, extracellular, dextran-based polysaccharide that allows them to cohere, forming plaque. Sucrose is the only sugar that bacteria can use to form this sticky polysaccharide.
The word sucrose was coined in 1857, by the English chemist William Miller from the French sucre ("sugar") and the generic chemical suffix for sugars -ose. The abbreviated term Suc is often used for sucrose in scientific literature.
The name saccharose was coined in 1860 by the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot. Saccharose is an obsolete name for sugars in general, especially sucrose.
In sucrose, the monomers glucose and fructose are linked via an ether bond between C1 on the glucosyl subunit and C2 on the fructosyl unit. The bond is called a glycosidic linkage. Glucose exists predominantly as a mixture of α and β "pyranose" anomers, but sucrose has only the α form.
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