In Volume 39 of Carbohydrate Chemistry: Chemical and Biological

Approaches, glycochemistry and glycobiology have been combined

to demonstrate the contribution of organic chemistry, biological and

biochemical expertise to the increasingly important field of glycomics.

The first chapter is dedicated to the radical bromination of sugars,

involving a broad range of substrates and their transformations, clearly

demonstrating the synthetic utility of this reaction and the uniqueness

of carbohydrates as starting materials, leading to a wide variety of molecular tools for chemical glycobiology. While the first chapter is

dedicated to organic synthetic approaches, the second one illustrates

the importance of enzymatic and chemoenzymatic syntheses for the

production of heparin. Recent developments on synthetic glycolipids

as ligands and inhibitors of mycobacterial cell wall component

biosynthesis and functions are described in chapter 3 and the next

chapters deal with carbohydrate processing enzymes and their

inhibitors. The design and synthesis of glycosyltransferase and glycosidase

inhibitors is revised, paying particular attention to imino sugars and to carbohydrate epoxides as key intermediates for inhibitor synthesis. An overview on glycosidase metabolic changes in diabetes is presented and a survey of the most efficient

and selective inhibitors of hexosaminidases, which are implicated in

neurodegenerative disorders, is also given. A chapter is devoted to

the interesting area of surface binding sites in carbohydrate active enzymes.

Last but not least, a review of the X-ray crystallography of lectins

completes the volume as the final chapter.

Volume 39 contains chapters covering chemical, biochemical and

biological approaches that demonstrate, in a meaningful way,

how interdisciplinary glycosciences contribute to advances in the

recognition of the biological processes that may be controlled to

promote health and prevent disease.