In this video, we're going to introduce 3 different size classes of carbohydrates that we have numbered down below, and the numbers here correspond with the numbers that we have throughout our image. Now what you'll notice is that for all three of these size classes, the word saccharide here is present, which recall from our last lesson video means sugar. And so, saccharide is present in all three of these size classes, which means sugar, and that's referring to carbohydrates. And so really these three different size classes, they differ in the root word, their prefix. And so the very first size class is going to be the monosaccharide.
Now recall that mono is a prefix that means just 1 or singular. And so monosaccharides are going to be a single carbohydrate unit, or in other words, monosaccharides are the monomers of carbohydrates, and that is very, very important for you all to note. Now an example of a monosaccharide is glucose, which once again is the most abundant monosaccharide. And so, it's one that you all should start to familiarize yourself with a little bit. And so when we take a look at our image down below, notice number 1 is the monosaccharide, which is just a single carbohydrate unit or just a single hexagon here, if you will.
Now the second size class of carbohydrate is going to be the oligosaccharide. And so oligo is a prefix that means a few. And so oligosaccharide, when you put it together, means a few sugars. So somewhere between 2 and 20 covalently linked monosaccharides would be classified as oligosaccharides. So when we take a look at our example down below at number 2, the oligosaccharides, we're showing you 2 types.
We're showing you, one here that has, 2 sugar units linked together. So this would be more specifically a disaccharide since di is a prefix meaning 2. And then, here what we have is a trisaccharide since, tri is a prefix meaning 3 and there are 3 sugar units linked together. But once again anywhere between 2 to 20 would be considered oligosaccharides, and so these are some oligosaccharides. Now the 3rd size class of carbohydrate that you all should be familiar with are the polysaccharides. And once again, poly is a prefix that means many, and so these are going to have greater than 20 covalently linked monosaccharides together, and, polysaccharides are of course going to be the polymer form of the carbohydrate.
And so when we take a look at our image down below at the polysaccharides here, notice that it has, more than 20 covalently linked monosaccharide units together, and so we start to form the polysaccharide. Moving forward, we're going to talk about some specific examples of polysaccharides and their functions, so keep that in mind. But for now this here concludes our introduction to the 3 size classes of carbohydrates, monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides, and we'll be able to get some practice moving forward in our course. So I'll see you all in our next video.