The winner of the mutarotation challenge (published in volume 414 issue 9) is:
André M. Striegel, Chemical Sciences Division, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
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Lactose
Milk sugar
Lactobiose
α- and β-d-Galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-d-glucose
Lactose is a disaccharide composed of galactose and glucose subunits. Lactose makes up around 2% of milk (by weight) from reindeers up to 8% of milk from donkey. The name comes from lac, the Latin word for milk, plus the suffix -ose used for sugars. Milk sugar was first mentioned by the Italian physician Fabrizio Bartoletti (also Bartoletto, Bartholet, Bartoleto, Bertoletti, Bartholdi, Bartholetus…) in 1615 [1]. In 1700, the Venetian pharmacist Lodovico Testi published a booklet of testimonials to the power of milk sugar and named it saccharum lactis [2]. In 1780, lactose was identified as a sugar by Carl Wilhelm Scheele [3]. The French chemist Jean Baptiste André Dumas named the substance as lactose in 1843 [4]. In 1856, Louis Pasteur caused confusion when he named the galactose as “lactose” [5]. Marcellin Berthelot renamed it “galactose,” and transferred the name “lactose” to the milk sugar in 1860 [6]. In 1894, Emil Fischer had established the configurations of the component sugars. In aqueous solution, lactose equilibrate the two anomeric α- and β- glucopyranose subunits by converting the stereocenter on the anomeric carbon. This process is named “mutarotation.”
References
Fabrizio Bartoletti, Methodus in dyspnoeam … [Procedure for asthma … ], (Bologna (“Bononia”), (Italy): Nicolò Tebaldini for the heirs of Evangelista Dozza, 1633), p. 400.
Lodovico Testi, De novo Saccharo Lactis [On the new milk sugar] (Venice, (Italy): Hertz, 1700).
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1780) “Om Mjölk och dess syra” (About milk and its acid), Kongliga Vetenskaps Academiens Nya Handlingar (New Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Science), 1 : 116–124.
Dumas, Traité de Chimie, Appliquée aux Arts, volume 6 (Paris, France: Bechet Jeune, 1843), p. 293.
Pasteur (1856) “Note sur le sucre de lait” (Note on milk sugar), Comptes rendus, 42 : 347–351.
Marcellin Berthelot, Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse [Organic chemistry based on synthesis] (Paris, France: Mallet-Bachelier, 1860), vol. 2, pp. 248–249 and pp. 268–270.
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This article is the solution to the Analytical Challenge to be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-03935-6
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Meusinger, R. Solution to the mutarotation challenge. Anal Bioanal Chem 414, 7003 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-04225-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-022-04225-x