2-Oxo derivatives of glycosides, called 2-keto glycosides or glycoside 2-uloses, are biologically important in carbohydrate metabolism and are very useful in synthesis of branched-chain sugars and amino sugars. Very little is known of their chemistry because of the high susceptibility of these compounds to degradation in solution, and in particular their instability to base. Thus it is important to study the reactivities of 2-keto glycosides. In a previous paper, we reported the transformation of 2-keto glycosides in pyridine solution. During the transformation of 2-and 3-keto glycosides, a demethoxylation reaction of the enol intermediate was shown to take place simultaneously with elimination to give hex-1-enopyran-3-ulose.
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