Aldohexoses have 4 chiral centers, or 16 (24) stereoisomers possible. Does that mean they have 16 individual sugar names?

Question

30196 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2014-12-24T03:32:01

Yes, there are 16 individual sugar names.

An aldohexose has four chiral centres.

So there are #2^4 = 16# optical isomers.

The 8 D-aldohexoses are shown below.

Their mirror images are the L-aldohexoses, the other 8 of the 16.

Their names are L-allose, L-altrose, L-glucose, etc.

Hence, each of the 16 aldohexoses has its own name.