01/16/2026
Rare sugars such as D-tagatose offer sweetness with fewer calories and a lower glycemic impact, but their production has long been inefficient and expensive. A new study demonstrates that a classic metabolic pathway, long thought to operate in only one direction, can be reversed inside living cells to make tagatose directly from glucose. The work introduces a potentially simpler and more scalable route to producing rare sugars, while also reshaping how scientists think about metabolic flexibility.