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Updated: May 5, 2026

A Strategy for Sensitive, Large Scale Quantitative Metabolomics
Published on: May 27, 2014
Short and sweet: (D)-glucose to (L)-glucose and (L)-glucuronic acid
R Fernando Martínez1, Zilei Liu, Andreas F G Glawar
1Chemistry Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TA (UK).
Abstract:
The scarcity and expense of access to L-sugars and other rare sugars have prevented the exploitation of their biological potential; for example D-psicose, only recently available, has been recognized as an important new food. Here we give the definitive and cheap synthesis of 99.4% pure L-glucose from D-glucose which requires purification of neither intermediates nor final product other than extraction into and removal of solvents; a simple crystallization will raise the purity to >99.8%.
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