Abstract:
The presence of hydroxyl functionalities and well-defined chiral centers in carbohydrates as well as their natural abundance attracted chemists worldwide to exploit this class of molecules as precursors for synthesis of a large number of natural products and biologically active molecules during recent decades. Apart from that, various types of molecules have also been synthesized from carbohydrates with a view to using them to study biological phenomena taking place in living systems. Thus, both the diversity and easy availability of these relatively cheap chiral compounds led to a plethora of applications in the design and syntheses of natural and synthetic molecules of biological importance.1 Among the many carbohydrate derivatives, unsaturated sugars occupy a significant place as starting materials for the syntheses of various types of organic compounds due to the wealth of functional, conformational and stereochemical information associated with them
