Definition of "pentose" [pen•tose]

• Any of a class of monosaccharides having five carbon atoms per molecule and including ribose and several other sugars. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "We have already considered the assembly of carbohydrates in regard to the Calvin cycle and the pentose phosphate pathway (Chapter 20)."
• "There was my pentose and methyl-pentose determination in grapes and wines to which I had devoted my last summer vacation at the Asti"
• "Seriously TP, a physicist has a much easier time documenting evidence for both lightspeed and its constancy within a small range than does a biologist who must defend OOL and account for the evolution of systems like the pentose phosphate pathway or mismatch and base excision repair pathways or the genetic code or the evolution of mechanisms designed to react to positive supercoils that result from the separation of the DNA double helix."