The letters ‘D’ or ‘L’ before the name of a stereoisomer of a compound indicates the correlation of configuration of that particular stereoisomer. This refers to their relationship with one of the isomers of glyceraldehyde. Predict whether the following compound has ‘D’ or ‘L’ configuration.
To identify whether the compound configuration is ‘D’ or ‘L’ we check the presence of the -OH group. As the -OH group is present on the left side of the fifth carbon atom, the compound configuration is ‘L’.