Question

How can Carbohydrates be classified based on the number of carbohydrate units?

Answer 1

Classification of carbohydrates based on the number of carbohydrate units:

1. Carbohydrates are polymers of saccharide (sugar) molecules.
2. Carbohydrates can be monosaccharides (one sugar molecule), disaccharides (two sugar molecules), and polysaccharides (multiple sugar molecules), based on the number of sugar molecules.
3. They are made up of the glycosidic bond after the elimination of water.
4. For example, starch is made up of condensed monomers of glucose molecules, hence a polysaccharide of glucose.
5. The number of units carbohydrates are made up of can be calculated via the hydrolysis process to release each saccharide subunit after breaking down the glycosidic bond.
6. Carbohydrate molecules that cannot be further hydrolyzed are known as monosaccharides.
7. The monosaccharides have an empirical formula of (Ch₂O), whereas the empirical formula for carbohydrates is (Ch₂O)x or Cx(H₂0)x where x is the number of carbon molecules.
8. Monosaccharides are hydrates of carbon.
9. We should not get confused with compounds like formaldehyde (HCHO) and acetic acid (CH₃COOH), which have the same empirical formula as a carbohydrate but aren't carbohydrates.
10. Whereas some exceptions of carbohydrates are also there which don't follow the general empirical formula, such as rhamnose (C₆H₁₂O₅).
11. Polysaccharides are complex carbohydrates with many sugar units.
12. The subunits in a polysaccharide can range from a hundred to thousands and they can be also arranged by branching.
13. Hence, the classification of carbohydrates based on the number of molecules released after hydrolysis is:

Number of carbohydrate molecules	1	2	3	4	2 to 10	more than 10
(___) saccharide	Mono-	Di-	Tri-	Tetra-	Oligo-	Poly-