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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Pulse-chase Analysis of N-linked Sugar Chains from Glycoproteins in Mammalian Cells
Published on: April 27, 2010
Reaction of monosaccharides with proteins: possible evolutionary significance
1Laboratory of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.
Abstract:
Measurements were made of the rate of condensation of various monosaccharides with amino groups of hemoglobin to form Schiff base linkages. The reactivity of each sugar was dependent on the extent to which it exists in the open (carbonyl) structure rather than in the ring (hemiacetal or hemiketal) structure. Among the 15 monosaccharides tested, aldoses showed higher reactivities than ketoses. Glucose was the least reactive of the aldohexoses. The emergence of glucose as the primary metabolic fuel may be due in part to the high stability of its ring structure which limits potentially deleterious nonenzymatic glycosylation of proteins.
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