Allulose-psicose nomenclature usage.
In the early pre-1930 literature D-ribo-hex-2-ulose, the last of the ketohexoses to be
firmly identified, was called pseudo-fructose or ψ-fructose [pseudo may be written as
the Greek letter psi ψ]. Psicose as a trivial name was first suggested by Ohle and Just [1]in 1935. They explain in footnote 1 of the paper: "Statt der schleppenden Bezeichnung
Pseudo-fructose möchten wir den Namen Psicose in Vorschlag bringen" which means“Instead of the cumbersome expression pseudo-fructose we would like to suggest thename psicose.” Thus pseudo-or psi-fructose is shortened to psicose.
Much of the chemistry of psicose was explored by Reichstein in the Hoffman La Roche
development of vitamin C in the mid-1930s. In Helvetica, Reichstein never referred toallulose and used psicose in the title of several papers such as: d-Psicose [2] and lPsicose (2-Keto-l-ribo-hexose, Pseudo-fructose), Diaceton-l-psicose und Diaceton-lpsicuronsäure [3]. The first papers to use allulose [4,5] claim that allulose is present in
unfermentable substances in molasses. The authors say “Because of [the] relation of theketohexose to allose and altrose we favor the name “allulose”, proposed by William
Lloyd Evans at the Atlantic City meeting of the American Chemical Society meeting in
September, 1941.” The scientific accuracy of this claim was challenged by Hough in
1953 [6] who in this paper.
The naturally occurring nucleoside psicofuranine was reported in 1959 [7] and led to anumber of papers on psicose; the name was derived from psicose as the sugarcomponent. A series of papers by Hough reports the isolation of allulose from itea [8],the microbial oxidation of allitol to L-allulose [9], and other studies on itea [10,11,12].
Allulose is used consistently in this series of papers.
In the definitive IUPAC Carbohydrate Nomenclature, the only trivial name given for Dribo-hex-2-ulose is D-psicose on page 1941[13]; allulose is not mentioned. In a topic
search for publications on Web of Science since 1945, allulose has 25 hits whereas
psicose has 473 hits - of which 145 have an address in Japan. 314 of the psicose papers
have appeared since 2005. In a Wikipedia search in the UK, allulose gets directed topsicose. A search for psicose gives the hexose as the top answer but the next item is theHitchcock film Psycho [http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho] where the title of themovie in Brazil was Psicose. All the images shown in the search are from the Hitchcock
film.
Allulose has used in papers referring to D-allulose 6-phosphate and associated enzymes.
The following are some recent papers that have allulose in the title: (i) Competitive
inhibitors of type B ribose 5-phosphate isomerases: design, synthesis and kineticevaluation of new D-allose and D-allulose 6-phosphate derivatives [14] (ii) 3CTL: Crystal
structure of D-Allulose 6-Phosphate 3-Epimerase from Escherichia coli K12 complexedwith D-glucitol 6-phosphate and magnesium [15] (iii) Structural basis for substratespecificity in phosphate binding (beta/alpha)(8)-barrels: D-allulose 6-phosphate 3epimerase from Escherichia coli K-12 [16].
Although psicose is well-established as the trivial name for ribo-hex-2-ulose, there isgood precedent for the alternative use of allulose in both scientific and otherpublications.

[1] H. Ohle, F. Just, Berichte, 1935, 68, 601. [2] M. Steiger, T. Reichstein, Helv. Chim.
Acta, 1936, 19, 184. [3] M. Steiger, T. Reichstein, Helv. Chim. Acta, 1935, 18, 790. [4] F.
Zerban , L. Sattler, Indust. Engineer. Chem., 1942, 34, 1180. [5] F. Zerban, L. Sattler, J. Am.
Chem. Soc., 1942, 64, 1710. [6] L. Hough, J. Jones, E. Richards, J. Chem. Soc., 1953, 2005.
[7] W. Schroeder, H. HoekBema, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1959, 81, 1767. [8] L. Hough, B. E.
Stacey, B. E. Phytochemistry 1963, 2, 315-320. [9] J. G. Carr, R. A. Coggins, L. Hough, B. E.
Stacey, G. C Whiting, Phytochemistry 1968, 7, 1. [10] L. Hough, B. E. Stacey,Phytochemistry 1966, 5, 215. [11] L. Hough, B. E. Stacey, Phytochemistry 1966, 5, 171.
[12] L. Hough, B. E. Stacey, Phytochemistry 1973, 12, 573. [13] McNaught, N., Pure &Appl. Chem., 1996, 68, 1919. [14] S. Mariano, A. K. Roos, S. L. Mowbray, L. Salmon,Carbohydr. Res. 2009, 344, 869. [15] A. A. Fedorov, E. V. Fedorov, K. K. Chan, J. A. Gerlt, S.
C. Almo, Protein Data Bank 2009. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2210/pdb3ctl/ pdb. [16] K.
K.. Chan, A. A. Fedorov, E. V. Fedorov, S. C. Almo, J. A. Gerlt, Biochemistry 2008, 47, 9608.