Imberti Silvia, McLain Sylvia E, Rhys Natasha H, Bruni Fabio, Ricci Maria Antonietta
UKRI-STFC, ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, OX11 0QX Didcot, United Kingdom.
Department of Chemistry, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9RH Brighton, United Kingdom.
ACS Omega. 2019 Dec 18;4(27):22392-22398. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02794. eCollection 2019 Dec 31.
Natural sugars combine energy supply and, except a few cases, a pleasant taste. On the other hand, exaggerated consumption may impact population health. This has busted the research for the synthesis of increasingly cheaper artificial sweeteners, with low energy content and intense taste. Here, we suggest that studies of the hydration properties of three disaccharides, namely, the natural sucrose and lactose and the artificial sucralose, may explain the difference by orders of magnitude among their sweetness. This is done by analyzing via Monte Carlo simulations the neutron diffraction differential cross sections of aqueous solutions of the three sugars and their isotopes. Our results show that the strength of the sugar-water hydrogen bond interaction is one of the factors influencing sweetness, another being the number of water molecules within the first neighboring shell of the sugar whether bonded or not.
天然糖既能提供能量，而且在大多数情况下味道宜人。另一方面，过度食用可能会影响大众健康。这促使人们开展研究，合成越来越便宜的人工甜味剂，这些甜味剂能量含量低但味道浓郁。在此，我们认为对三种二糖（即天然的蔗糖和乳糖以及人工合成的三氯蔗糖）水合特性的研究，或许能够解释它们甜度之间数量级的差异。这是通过蒙特卡罗模拟分析三种糖及其同位素水溶液的中子衍射微分截面来实现的。我们的研究结果表明，糖 - 水氢键相互作用的强度是影响甜度的因素之一，另一个因素是糖的第一邻近壳层内无论是否键合的水分子数量。
