ABSTRACT
This chapter disucsses the molecular architectures of linear as well as branched polysaccharides in which the chemical repeating motif is a disaccharide or larger. Such structures are normally beyond the scope of conformational analysis because of the complexity associated with multidimensional space, but some of them are tractable to X-ray analysis. Carrageenans belong to a family of gel-forming sulfated polysaccharides found in marine red algae Rhodophyceae. Fibers prepared from the potassium salt of κ-carrageenan are somewhat oriented but substantially less crystalline than those of κ-carrageenan. Consequently, the diffraction pattern shows only continuous intensities on layer lines. Agarose is an excellent gel-forming polysaccharide belonging to a family of red seaweeds Rhodophyceae. Hyaluronan, commonly known as hyaluronic acid, is an ubiquitous and unsulfated glycosaminoglycan found in mammalian connective tissues and it forms the central core of proteoglycan aggregate.
