Metal hydroxides interact rapidly and reversibly with carbo hydrates to form metal hydroxide-carbohydrate adducts and through hydroxylic proton abstraction to form alcoholates. The formation of an alcoholate, or oxyanion, is an essential step in numerous inter-and intramolecular reactions of polyhydroxy compounds. Bases also attack aldehydo and keto sugars to give carbanions that are precursors for isomerization, epimenzation, internal oxidation and reduction, and group migration. Carbohydrate acidity can be explained in terms of statistical factors, electrostatic field effects, polar group interactions, intramolecular hydrogen bonding, steric hindrance, and entropy of ionization.Ο tudies of the interaction of metal bases with carbohydrates were begun ^ in the early half of the 19th century with chemists such as Berzelius (50) and Peligot (36). Peligot was perhaps the first to prepare alkalimetal and alkaline-earth metal alcoholates of sugars. He deserves recog nition for initiating the investigation of reactions between reducing sugar and alkali that ultimately lead to saccharinic acid formation (37). Alco holates result simply from the loss of a proton from a hydroxyl group whereas saccharinic acid formation and numerous alkali-induced isomerizations, except for anomerization, are initiated by carbanion formation. These carbanions stem from carbon-hydrogen ionization at a carbon atom adjacent to a strongly electron-attracting substituent such as a carbonyl or carboxyl group and are stabilized by derealization of the negative charge over several atoms. One of the resonance structures contributing to this hybrid anion is an enolate ion.
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