Polysaccharide

Product Description

Polysaccharides are structures, formed of repeating units (either mono- or di-saccharides) joined together by . These structures are often linear, but may contain various degrees of branching. Polysaccharides are often quite heterogeneous, containing slight modifications of the repeating unit. Depending on the structure, these can have distinct properties from their monosaccharide building blocks. They may be or even in water.
When all the monosaccharides in a polysaccharide are the same type the polysaccharide is called a homopolysaccharide, but when more than one type of monosaccharide is present they are called heteropolysaccharides.
Examples include storage polysaccharides such as and , and structural polysaccharides such as and .
Polysaccharides have a general formula of Cx(H2O)y where x is usually a large number between 200 and 2500. Considering that the repeating units in the polymer backbone are often six-carbon monosaccharides, the general formula can also be represented as (C6H10O5)n where 40n3000