🥼organic chemistry review

L Sugar

Written by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated September 2025
Written by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated September 2025

Definition

L Sugars are a type of sugar molecule that are part of the mirror-image forms found in nature, distinguished by their spatial arrangement around asymmetric carbon atoms. In organic chemistry, they represent the left-handed configuration in a pair of stereoisomers, which is opposite to the more common D sugars found in organisms.