How plants produce defensive toxins without harming themselves

Plants produce toxic substances to defend themselves against herbivores. In a new study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena and the University of Münster, Germany, were able to describe ...

New family on the block: A novel group of glycosidic enzymes

A group of researchers from Japan has discovered a novel enzyme from a soil fungus. In their study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, they speculate that this enzyme plays important roles in the soil ecosystem, ...

Herbivore defence in ferns

(Phys.org)—Unlike flowering plants, bracken ferns do not release any odour signals to attract the enemies of their attackers for their own benefit.

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Glycoside

In chemistry, a glycoside (pronounced /ˈɡlaɪkəsaɪd/) is a molecule in which a sugar is bound to a non-carbohydrate moiety, usually a small organic molecule. Glycosides play numerous important roles in living organisms. Many plants store chemicals in the form of inactive glycosides. These can be activated by enzyme hydrolysis, which causes the sugar part to be broken off, making the chemical available for use. Many such plant glycosides are used as medications. In animals and humans, poisons are often bound to sugar molecules as part of their elimination from the body.

In formal terms, a glycoside is any molecule in which a sugar group is bonded through its anomeric carbon to another group via a glycosidic bond. Glycosides can be linked by an O- (an O-glycoside), N- (a glycosylamine), S-(a thioglycoside), or C- (a C-glycoside) glycosidic bond. The given definition is the one used by IUPAC, which recommends the Haworth projection to correctly assign stereochemical configurations. Many authors require in addition that the sugar be bonded to a non-sugar for the molecule to qualify as a glycoside, thus excluding polysaccharides. The sugar group is then known as the glycone and the non-sugar group as the aglycone or genin part of the glycoside. The glycone can consist of a single sugar group (monosaccharide) or several sugar groups (oligosaccharide).

The first glycoside ever identified was amygdalin, by the French chemists Pierre Robiquet and Antoine Boutron-Charlard, in 1830.

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