A reducing sugar is any sugar that either has an aldehyde group or is capable of forming one in solution through isomerism. The cyclic hemiacetal forms of aldoses can open to reveal an aldehyde and certain ketoses can undergo tautomerization to become aldoses. However, acetals, including those found polysaccharide linkages, cannot easily become a free aldehyde. The aldehyde functional group allows the sugar to act as a reducing agent, for example in the Tollens' test or Benedict's test.
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Famous quotes containing the words reducing and/or sugar:
“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“They give us a pair of cloth shorts twice a year for all our clothing. When we work in the sugar mills and catch our finger in the millstone, they cut off our hand; when we try to run away, they cut off our leg: both things have happened to me. It is at this price that you eat sugar in Europe.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)