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Carbohydrates are indispensable to life on Earth. In their simplest form, they act as an elemental energy source for supporting life. For the most part, however, carbohydrates appear not as simple sugars but as complex molecular conjugates, or glycans. Glycans come in many shapes and sizes, from simple chains (polysaccharides) to highly branched complexes bristling with antennae-like arms. And although proteins and nucleic acids like DNA have traditionally attracted far more scientific attention, glycans are also key to life. They are omnipresent in nature, creating the intricate sugar coat that surrounds the cells of almost every organism and occupying the spaces between these cells. As part of this so-called extracellular matrix, glycans, with their special chemical configurations, have a vital role in transmitting important biochemical signals from and between cells. In this way, these sugars guide the cellular communication that is essential for normal cell and tissue development and physiological function. The Sweet Science of Glycobiology Intricate carbohydrates, molecules that are particularly vital for communication among cells, are coming under systematic research. Ram Sasisekharan and James R. Myette See: Glycobiology. The central paradigm of actual molecular biology is that biological information flows from DNA to RNA to protein. The power of this concept lies not only in its template-driven precision, but also in the capability to manipulate any one type of molecules based on knowledge of another. With the imminent deciphering of the genomic sequences of humans and various other usually studied model organisms, even more spectacular gains in the understanding of biological systems are expected. In actual fact, making a cell needs two other major classes of molecules: lipids and carbohydrates. These molecules can act as intermediates in generating energy, as signaling molecules, or as structural components. The supportive roles of carbohydrates are specially important in the construction of complex multicellular organs and organisms, which need interactions of cells with one another and with the surrounding matrix. Indeed, every cell and various macromolecules in nature carry a dense and complex array of covalently linked sugar chains (called oligosaccharides or glycans). In some instances, these glycans can also be free-standing entities. Since many glycans are on the outer surface of cellular and secreted macromolecules, they are in a position to modulate or mediate a wide variety of events in cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions vital to the growth and function of all complex multicellular organisms and also interactions between organisms (e.g., between host and parasite). Also, simple, highly dynamic protein-bound glycans are abundant in the nucleus and cytoplasm, where they appear to act as regulatory switches.
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