How many diastereomers are there of glucose?

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Answer 1 · 2014-12-21T22:38:04

There are 14 diastereomers of D-glucose.

D-Glucose is an aldohexose.

It has four chiral centres. So it has #2^4 = 16# optical isomers.

The 8 D-aldohexoses are shown below.

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Their mirror images are the L-aldohexoses, the other 8 of the 16.

One of the mirror images is L-glucose. That is an enantiomer of D-glucose.

But the 7 other D-aldohexoses and the 7 other L-aldohexoses are diastereomers of D-glucose.

So there are 14 diastereomers of D-glucose.