What Are the Properties of Carbohydrates?

A carbohydrates are defined as "a biological compound containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen" and are an important source of food according to the Encarta World English Dictionary. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for the body and are composed of at least one building block of sugar. One or more sugars link together and form different types of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates can be simple or complex. Carbohydrates are usually broken down into five major groups, each with different properties: monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides and nucleotides.

Monosaccharide

• A monosaccharide is a simple sugar and is the simplest form of a carbohydrate. It cannot be broken down by water into a simpler sugar. Some examples of monosaccharides are fructose, glucose and ribose. Monosaccharides form the building blocks for more complex carbohydrates. Mono means "one" and saccharide means "sugar."

Disaccharides

• Disaccharide means "two sugars" and is commonly found in sucrose, lactose and maltose. Sucrose is typical table sugar and is made up of the monosaccharides, glucose and fructose. Lactose is a disaccharide found in milk and is made up of glucose and galactose. Maltose is the least commonly found disaccharide in nature and can also be referred to as "malt sugar," used in the production of beer, as one example. Disaccharides can cause a rapid rise in blood-glucose levels when digested.

Oligosaccharides

• Beans and legumes consist of complex carbohydrates and help to maintain a stable blood-sugar level.

  Oligosaccharides means, literally, "[a] few sugars." An oligosaccharide is a complex carbohydrate and contains three to six simple sugars. Oligosaccharides are typically found in plants. Raffinose and stachyose are two examples of oligosaccharides that are found in beans and legumes. These types of carbohydrates are not digested quickly and help to maintain a stable blood-sugar level.

Polysaccharides

• Polysaccharides, meaning "many sugars," are made up of chains of sugars that can consist of thousands of simple sugars in length.

  Cellulose is a polysaccharide and a major component of plant cell walls. Chitin is a polysaccharide found in the cuticles of arthropods (the largest animal phylum, which includes insects, spiders and crustaceans). It can also be found in sponges, mollusks, annelids (such as earthworms and leeches), in the cell walls of most fungi and in some green algae.

  Glycogen is a polysaccharide found in most animal cells, is similar to cellulose and is found in plant cells, protists and certain types of bacteria.

Nucleotide

• Nucleotides are carbohydrates that make up the nucleic acids of RNA and DNA.

  Nucleotides are carbohydrates that make up the nucleic acids RNA and DNA, which are the building blocks of life. They also function to transport and transform cellular energy and regulate enzymes. They are considered carbohydrates because they consist of, among other things, the sugar ribose, a monosaccharide in RNA, and deoxyribose, a pentose sugar (monosaccharide containing five carbon atoms), in DNA.