The Carbohydrate Wind Tunnel

"Nature" Reports on Powerful Carbohydrate Analytics for Sequencing and Quality Control / WITH PRESS PHOTOS. A team of researchers from Berlin succeeded in an effort to fundamentally improve carbohydrate analysis. With the new method, developed by Prof. Kevin Pagel (Freie Universität Berlin and Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society) and Prof. Peter Seeberger (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and Freie Universität Berlin), complex glycans, building blocks of life such as DNA and proteins, can now be sequenced. The quality control of synthetic carbohydrates is now possible as minimal impurities can be traced faster and more precisely. The new method is essential for the development of novel carbohydrate vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. Prof. Seeberger explains: "The new method is fast, reliable and sensitive. The glycosciences will get a push, comparable to the advances when gene sequencing was first developed." The structure of carbohydrates is much more complicated than that of genetic material or proteins Carbohydrate chains can be formed from more than 100 building blocks that can be can be linked together in branched chains and these can have different spatial structures, called anomers.