Complex Carbohydrates and Glycoconjugates: Structure, Functions and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The study of carbohydrates has a long history, spanning across two centuries, during which research paved the way from “sweet matter” to glycomics. The complexity of cabohydrates under such studies grew enormously: The term “complex carbohydrates” includes large oligosaccharides (dozens of carbohydrate units) and polysaccharides, both regular and irregular. Carbohydrate studies were inevitably expanded to adjacent areas, which is reflected by the general term “glycoconjugate” (a compound, in which molecule carbohydrate part(s) is/are covalently bonded with noncarbohydrate part(s)).

At present, carbohydrate science is an integral part of molecular biology along with genomics and proteomics. It includes structural studies of glycans, glycoproteins, proteoglycans, glycolipids, and low-molecular and complex glycosides of plant, animal, fungal, and bacterial origin. Supramolecular structural studies such as cell wall reconstruction are developed. The functional studies of carbohydrates concern molecular recognition such as carbohydrate–lectin or glycoside–enzyme interactions, cell recognition (normal and in pathologies), viral adhesion/penetration, oligo- and polysaccharide biosynthesis, and many other phenomena. In such studies, artificial carbohydrate-containing molecular probes (synthetic glycoconjugates) are widely used now.

Structural and functional studies are extremely stimulated by the progress of instrumental methods, especially in chromatography, electrophoresis, multidimensional NMR spectrometry, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and surface plasmon resonance (SPR). There is no modern carbohydrate analysis without hyphenated techniques, such as HPLC-MS.

This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research papers or comprehensive reviews that demonstrate or summarize significant advances in the field of carbohydrate chemistry and biochemistry. The papers may be devoted to targeted synthesis of complex carbohydrates and glycoconjugates, isolation and structure determination of complex carbohydrates and glycoconjugates, and elucidation of their biological activities. Papers concerning development of applications of instrumental methods in carbohydrate chemistry and biology are also welcome in this Special Issue. Critical reviews and discussion papers revealing problems and drawing future perspectives of the carbohydrate science are especially invited (though we are not looking for papers with a far too general focus). Nontargeted syntheses and manuscripts without chemical structures will not be considered. All molecular structures must be firmly established. Clinical trials and animal and cell testings are not suitable for this Special Issue if they are not strongly needed to support hypotheses or theories concerning structure–function correlations.

Dr. Alexander O. Chizhov
Guest Editor

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