Although the process of understanding the biological functions of carbohydrates has developed slowly due to the lack of efficient approaches in obtaining and studying these structures, in the past two decades, remarkable advances have been made in chemical and chemoenzymatic synthesis of carbohydrates and glycoconjugates. The material presented in this volume shows how a better understanding of the structure and the function of carbohydrate-containing bacterial cell wall has revealed that carbohydrate-containing molecules and carbohydrate-like structures are useful as carbohydrate-based anti-microbial vaccines, anti-viral drugs, anti-coagulants, anti-cancer drugs, and potential anti-cancer vaccines. In addition, the text explores the important roles that novel glycolipids have been found to play in the immune system.
Metabolic engineering has demonstrated itself as an efficient approach to probe and manipulate biological functions of carbohydrates both in vitro and in vivo. Automated glycan analysis, carbohydrate microarrays, and novel high-throughput screening methods have hastened the analysis and the understanding of carbohydrate-containing structures. Polypeptide-based glycopolymers have been developed for the study of multivalent binding events of carbohydrates and proteins. This text presents examples of these recent developments in using chemical techniques and tools to study glycobiology. This is an excellent reference book for upper-division undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers who are interested in carbohydrate-related medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, and chemical biology.
