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Relevance
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Glycans are crucial for plant life and are used for storage, defense, and signaling and as structural cell wall components. Plant oligo- and polysaccharides are also important components of food and feed and have numerous industrial applications. Starch is the most common carbohydrate in the human diet, whereas plant cell walls provide bulk materials including timber, paper, and cloth, as well as fine chemicals, food ingredients, and biofuel feedstocks. The complexity and diversity of plant polysaccharides underpin their biological roles and many of their industrially important characteristics, but also produce challenges for research and optimal utilization. A detailed knowledge of the structures, functions, interactions, and occurrence of plant glycans is essential for understanding their complex contributions to plant life and to fully exploit their commercial potential. However, unlike proteins and nucleotides, complex carbohydrates are not readily amenable to sequencing or synthesis, and existing biochemical techniques for glycan analysis, although powerful, are usually low throughput.
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