What is a glycosidic bond?

1 Answer
Dec 19, 2015

A glycosidic bond connects one sugar to another functional group at the anomeric carbon, forming a glycoside.

A glycoside looks something like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/

and the circled bond that connects the sugar to the oxygen from the phenyl group is the glycosidic bond. The carbon belonging to the sugar in that bond is the anomeric carbon since its orientation (axial/equatorial) determines the #alpha# or #beta# designation of the cyclic sugar.

(The sugar is known as some sort of hexose, and the non-sugar compound is a decarbonylated derivative of salicylic acid, 1-hydroxybenzoic acid.)