ABSTRACT
The discovery of the role of complex carbohydrates in biological recognition and adhesion process has generated lot of interest in the studies of carbohydrate-protein interactions. Though a variety of sugars are available in nature, only a few of them are used to generate diverse oligosaccharide structures through alternative isomeric linkages to code biological information. A lot of information has accumulated about the binding of sugars to proteins from solution and X-ray crystallographic studies. Sugars are hydrophilic in nature and carry a number of hydroxyl groups. They form hydrogen bonds with a protein either directly or through water molecules; three types have been identified: co-operative hydrogen bonds, bidentate hydrogen bonds and hydrogen bond networks. Cooperative hydrogen bonds result from the simultaneous participation of a sugar hydroxyl group as donor and acceptor. Though sugars are hydrophilic in nature specific orientations of non polar CH groups create a hydrophobic patch.
