Hexoses
The objective of this article is to illustrate and visualize the structures and concepts of glucose (aldohexose[1]) and fructose (ketohexose[2]) that are difficult to visualize and illustrate by viewing two dimensional structures in textbooks.
GlucoseGlucose
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The figure to the left contains glucose drawn as a Fischer projection structure. When drawing a Fischer projection the most oxidized group, in this case the aldehyde group, is is positioned at the top, all horizontal bonds project to the front of the plane of the screen and all vertical bonds project behind the plane of the screen. The structure shown to the right in the Jmol applet is drawn in this same conformation, but the structure gives the appearance of being 3D. The applet shows the glucose molecule circling back on itself, so that carbon #6, (green) circles around to meet the aldehyde carbon, C#1 (orange).