During my biochem research I was exposed to a new term called ‘tautomers’. As such i decided to really go and research what this meant, with reference to the topic of carbohydrates.
I found out that Tautomers are constitutional isomers. They are molecules that differ themselves around a particular molecule, usually a hydrogen molecule. This facilitates the transferring a H+ to another position within the same molecule. This can be referred to as Tautomerization Reactions.
Tautomers have a high rate of conversion, and a well known example is keto-enol tautorism. that is it has both a carbonyl group, as well as ONE hydroxyl group simultaneously bonded to to carbon forming a double bond. Tautomers have an important role in the metabolism of nitrogen bases, such as the pairing between nitrogen bases which occurs in DNA and mainly in RNA.
ALSO DID YOU KNOW…….that
Ring-chain tautomerism occurs when the movement of the proton is accompanied by a change from an open structure to a ring, such as the open chian and pyran forms of glucose and furan form of fructose.
metabolicmastermindbiochem 