Oligosaccharide chains structure diversity

Improved methods for the analysis of oligosaccharide and polysaccharide structure have revealed remarkable complexity and diversity in the oligosaccharides of glycoproteins and glycolipids. Consider the oligosaccharide chains in Figure 7-31, typical of those... 

The Core. Core oligosaccharides are structurally less diverse than O-chains. The core oligosaccharide shown in Figure 1 is common to many or all Salmonella serotypes. Distinct core types have been... 

The structural complexity of oligosaccharides goes far beyond that of proteins and nucleotides [1-4], Because with nucleotides or amino acids only hnear chains with just one linkage type are formed, a tetramer of nucleotides or amino acids with four different monomeric subunits can have only 24 different stractures, while in excess of 10,000 different stractures are possible for a tetrasaccharide. The various stereochemical centres, the anomeric centre, the multiple linkage types, and the ability to form branched stractures all contribute to this structural diversity. 

Polymeric tannins have more complicated structures including esterified oligosaccharide chains for the hydrolyzable ones or further polymerization of the flavonoid units for condensed ones. Because of their diversity including small molecules and polymers, characterization of natural tannins is not simple. The first step in their characterization is isolation. This has been done using several procedures such as ultrafiltration and gel permeation chromatography [2]. 

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