ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION Commercial interest in polyol surfactants derived from glucose exists for several reasons: (1) glucose is an inexpensive agriculture-based (and therefore renewable) raw material; (2) surfactants derived from glucose have a "green" environmental image (and are, in fact, readily degraded in the environment [1]), and (3) their polyfunctional (yet readily accessible) molecular structures offer the possibility of distinctive performance and properties relative to presently used surfactants [2]. Short-chain polyol surfactants readily solubilize membrane polar lipids, and facilitate the isolation and study of membrane-bound proteins [3,4].
