The fact that practically all living cells are covered with carbohydrates gives an indication that these unique molecules are of tremendous importance to life with impacts in health and disease. One example of the significance of carbohydrates is found in the blood types that are determined by minor differences in the structure of the glycans on the surface of red blood cells. Other examples include glycosylation changes in cancer, the masking of viruses by glycans to evade the host immune response, and the inflammation resulting from exposure to endotoxins in gram-negative bacteria, among many others. As science delves deeper into understanding biological processes, it is increasingly confronted with the challenge to account for the roles that carbohydrates play in the molecular interactions that drive these processes. Molecular interactions are based on molecular shape, and molecular shape is determined by primary structure. Thus, it is vital to enlarge our repertoire of analytical tools for the elucidation of the primary structure of carbohydrates. Although a number of traditional analytical tools, including monosaccharide and linkage analysis by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), glycan composition analysis by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS), sequence analysis by tandem mass spectrometry (MSn), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, have been available for some time and have been used with tremendous success, a host of challenges posed by the specific structural peculiarities of carbohydrates remain to be met. These include the varying stability of glycosidic bonds and free monosaccharides to hydrolysis, the nonstoichiometric substitution by noncarbohydrate residues, the difficulty of automating the existing protocols for high-throughput analysis, the scarcity of standards, the unparalleled structural diversity and close similarity of different structures, and the lack of chromophores that can often not be directly overcome with labeling.

中文翻译：

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碳水化合物结构分析：方法和应用。

事实上，几乎所有的活细胞都被碳水化合物覆盖，这表明这些独特的分子对生命非常重要，对健康和疾病都有影响。碳水化合物重要性的一个例子是在血型中发现的，血型是由红细胞表面聚糖结构的微小差异决定的。其他例子包括癌症中的糖基化变化、聚糖对病毒的掩蔽以逃避宿主免疫反应，以及暴露于革兰氏阴性菌中的内毒素导致的炎症等。随着科学对生物过程的深入研究，越来越多的人面临着解释碳水化合物在驱动这些过程的分子相互作用中所起的作用的挑战。分子相互作用基于分子形状，而分子形状由一级结构决定。因此，扩大我们的分析工具库以阐明碳水化合物的一级结构至关重要。尽管有许多传统的分析工具，包括通过气相色谱/质谱 (GC/MS) 进行的单糖和连锁分析、通过基质辅助激光解吸电离质谱 (MALDI-MS) 进行的聚糖组成分析、通过串联质谱进行的序列分析（ MSn) 和核磁共振 (NMR) 光谱已经有一段时间了，并且已经取得了巨大的成功，但碳水化合物的特定结构特性带来的许多挑战仍有待解决。