From: Jonathan Brecher (jsb$##$camsoft.com)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 13:38:42 EDT
>My colleague and I have been discussing a stereochemistry puzzle. Appart
>from using X-ray , how could you differentiate a meso compound from a
>racemic mixture of the two enantiomers? For example, tartaric acid. What
>if only one compound had been isolated?
Well, at a fundamental level, a mixture of any sort (including a racemic
mixture) can always be separated into its components *somehow*. Tartaric
acid was originally characterized by crystallizing out single enantiomers
from a racemate, for example. Chiral chromatography should work well, too.
Even NMR would work in some cases, if you just want to know the presence of
the mixture.
Of course, separation is only a good indicator when it succeeds. If you
can't separate a substance, you don't know if it's truly a meso compound or
if you simply failed to find the right conditions for a separation...
Jonathan Brecher
CambridgeSoft Corporation
jsb$##$cambridgesoft.com
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