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; this fact 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, ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry, and surface plasmon resonance (SPR). There is no modern carbohydrate analysis without hyphenated techniques, such as HPLC-MS. To navigate in a global massive of carbohydrate information, interactive, curated databases are created; at the moment, glycoinformatics is an integral part of glycoscience which keeps together our knowledge in different branches of glycochemistry and glycobiology.

This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research papers, critical or comprehensive reviews that demonstrate or summarize significant advances in carbohydrate chemistry and biochemistry. Targeted synthesis, isolation and structure determination of complex carbohydrates and glycoconjugates are subjects eligible for publication especially if these studies accompanies with elucidation of biological activities. Papers devoted to development of applications of instrumental methods in carbohydrate chemistry and biology are especially welcome in this Special Issue. Feature papers, opinions and comments are acceptable if they stimulate fruitful discussion on problems in carbohydrate chemistry and biochemistry. Nontargeted syntheses and studies with no molecular aspects are out of the scope. All molecular structures of novel compounds must be firmly established. Clinical trials and animal and cell testings are eligible only if they are strongly needed to support hypotheses or theories concerning structure–function correlations and are not suitable if no molecular aspects are considered.

Dr. Alexander O. Chizhov
Guest Editor

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• complex carbohydrates
• glycoconjugates
• structure
• oligosaccharides
• polysaccharides
• glycomics
• carbohydrate analysis
• carbohydrate synthesis
• glycoside bond
• glycoproteins
• proteoglycans
• molecular recognition
• lectin
• cell wall
• cell surface
• molecular probe
• biosynthesis of complex carbohydrates
• high-resolution mass spectrometry
• nuclear magnetic resonance
• chromatography
• capillary electrophoresis
• glycoinformatics
• databases