Dextrans

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Complex branched polysaccharides made of linked glucose units, produced by certain bacteria and used in medicine as plasma expanders
2. Long-chain carbohydrate polymers composed of glucose molecules, often employed in clinical solutions and laboratory separation techniques
3. Bacterially synthesized glucose-based polysaccharides with branched structures, valued in medicine and biochemistry for their solubility

Etymology: "Dextrans" is simply the plural of "dextran", so the substance of the story lies in that base word. Dextran is a complex carbohydrate made of many glucose units, and the name combines the Latin "dexter", meaning "right" (as in "right-handed"), with the suffix "-an", the standard chemical ending for polysaccharides. The link to handedness comes from the way solutions of this substance rotate plane-polarised light to the right, a property chemists call dextrorotation, which gave the whole family of such sugars their name.