An efficient procedure for synthesis of fructose derivatives

We developed a very simple procedure to prepare fructose derivatives or fructosides. This procedure waived the requirement of isomer separation, which is usually a very common and difficult problem in fructose derivative syntheses. In this procedure, the hydroxyl groups were differentiated to expedite the preparation of many kinds of other fructose derivatives and the alkoxy group in the fructosides could exchange easily with alcohols under the mild acidic condition, which offered a new method to synthesize other fructosides through alcohol exchanging. By using this procedure, we successfully synthesized fluorogenic fructose derivatives for high throughput enzyme screening. This methodology could expand the usage of the abundant fructose in organic synthesis.