[Brucey]

Hi everyone

I recently enquired about purchasing small quantities of sucrose6phosphate, glucose6phosphate & trelhose6phosohTe (the latter being particularly resistant to oxidation as it has no aldehyde reducing function). All of these come as alkaline dipotassium salts. The vendor recommends storage / transport at -20 C. To me this seems like overkill.

Infact I don't really understand why sugar phosphates cannot sit in a pH buffered aqueous solution at room temp for years and never hydrolyse into the separate sugar and phosphate. With out the presence of a biological contamination, such as phosphatases, what inherent properties of sugar phosphates make them 'unstable' (if there are any) and which chemical mechanisms might cause degredation/cleavage of the phosphate group?

Kind regards

[Babcock_Hall]

Simple phosphomonoesters such as glucose 6-phosphate are most labile as the mono anion, which implies that they go through a maximum rate of hydrolysis near pH 4.  Even this maximum is not particularly fast at room temperature.  Glucose 1-phosphate is more labile, BTW.  One must also be concerned with microbiological degradation.

[Brucey]

Thanks. So what sort of things would I need to consider if storing trel6phoshate in solution in very dilute quantities at room temp? Or it that not feasible

Kind regards
Brucey

[Babcock_Hall]

As long as the pH is near neutral, I don't believe that short-term storage is a problem.  Can your experiment tolerate the presence of a bacteriostat?  If not, why not store the solution of sugar phosphate as a frozen solution, in small aliquots?