ABSTRACT
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A major emphasis of modern molecular biology and biochemistry has been on the genome and its protein products. Genes and proteins are linear macromolecules and with evolution of powerful methods including DNA synthesis, polymerase chain reaction, and peptide synthesis, these molecules became relatively easy to study. This situation is not the case with complex carbohydrates, which have multiple sites for substitution, are often branched, and are diffi cult to be synthesized. As major biological functions of complex carbohydrates are being recognized, modern studies on glycobiology and the emerging fi eld of glycomics have begun to defi ne the structural interactions between glycans and glycan-binding proteins (GBPs) (also called carbohydrate-binding proteins or lectins). Modern glycomics is a term coined in the late 1990s by Professor Vern Reinhold following the neologisms proteome/proteomics [1] and may be defi ned as the constellation of glycan structures (oligo-and polysaccharides) synthesized by cells and found in glycoproteins, glycolipids, and proteoglycans and in free glycans, e.g., milk and other fl uids. Functional glycomics is a term employed by the consortium for Functional Glycomics to denote the exploration of the recognition and interactions of the glycome in biological systems https://www. functionalglycomics.org/static/index.shtml.
