Anomeric Configuration of Polysaccharide

Anomeric Configuration of Polysaccharide • Polysaccharides form a diverse and complex family of biological macromolecules. They are polymeric carbohydrate molecules composed of long chains of monosaccharide units joined together by glycosidic linkages. It gives the constituent monosaccharides or oligosaccharides during hydrolysis. Polysaccharides own high molecular weights due to containing hundred to several thousand monosaccharides as well as polydispersed in nature with a wide range of closely related structures. • Polysaccharides categorized according to their molecular characteristics (type, number, bonding and sequence of monosaccharides), physicochemical characteristics (water solubility, viscosity, surface activity) and nutritional function (digestible or non-digestible). Polysaccharides contain only one type of monosaccharide repeating in the chain are termed homopolysaccharides, such as starch, cellulose and glycogen which are formed from only glucose, whereas those formed with two or more constituent monosaccharides are known as heteropolysaccharides, such as pectin, hemicellulose and gums. Polysaccharides can be linear, branched or even cyclic with a certain consequences owing to physicochemical nature themselves.



• Polysaccharides are abundant in nature and found in nearly every living organism. They can function as storage polysaccharides, such as starch in plants and glycogen in animals, structural elements in the cell walls of bacteria and plants and skeletal elements in arthropods. They can also be found linked to proteins and lipids, and have been implicated in cell–cell recognition and molecular targeting. • In order to discover their structure, it is necessary to determine not only monosaccharides composition and their linkage positions and sequence, but also the anomeric configuration of linkages, the ring size (furanose or pyranose), the absolute configuration (D or L) and identify any other substituents present. There is no single method capable of determining the total exact structure. Instead, separation and extraction techniques, component analysis, methylation analysis, glycosidic hydrolysis, mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy are required to determine the fine structure while size exclusion chromatography (SEC) coupled with light scattering (LS) detectors to determine the molecular size distribution.

• As one of the leading companies in the omics field with over years of experience in omics study, Creative Proteomics provides a series of service for polysaccharides characterization as below. • Molecular Weight Determination of Polysaccharide • Determination of the Absolute Configuration • Identification of the Anomeric Configuration • Polysaccharide Sequencing