Oxford University Press Bioorganic Chemistry: Carbohydrates (Topics in Bioorganic and Biological Chemistry)

Bioorganic chemistry has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, enriching the disciplines of biology and chemistry and providing important insights into the workings of biological systems at a molecular level. Recently, this growing field has witnessed some very exciting results in applying design and synthesis techniques to many problems in biochemistry and molecular biology. Bridging the gap between chemistry and biology, Topics in Bioorganic and Biological Chemistry: A Series of Books in Support of Teaching and Research will serve the needs of the many graduate students and researchers who work in and study this discipline. The inaugural work in this series, Bioorganic Chemistry, is composed of three volumes: Nucleic Acids, Peptides and Proteins, and Carbohydrates. This third volume, Bioorganic Chemistry: Carbohydrates, provides a broad overview of the topic. It covers the chemical and enzymatic synthesis of simple and complex carbohydrates and modern methods for the analysis of carbohydrate structure, and reviews the ways in which carbohydrates mediate binding to cells and subcellular targets such as DNA, proteins, and antibody binding sites. It also provides an overview of cyclodextrins and their properties and the biosynthesis of carbohydrates. The text is comprised of 13 chapters, making it ideal for use in a one-semester graduate level special topics course in carbohydrates. Each chapter begins with an introduction that includes basic principles, a summary of key findings which support current research in the field, and an overview of current research activity. The remainder of each chapter deals in greater detail with a number of recent studies that illustrate the nature of ongoing activity in the field. All chapters have been written by leading researchers, and numerous references are given.