Three - Dimensional Aspects of the Sugar Code - The Sugar Code - page 24

Figure 2.5 30 Å 3 sol-

vent box. The Discovery Studio Visualizer
(Accelrys) was used for visualization. The semi-

- Lactose in a 30 30 transparent solvent-accessible surface of lacto-

se is also visualized in order to readily spot the
lactose position in the middle of the water box.

β × ×

with N -acetylated glucose in position 2 at the reducing end moiety, an important
part of ABH and Lewis blood group determinants and docking point for lectins
(for structures of the epitopes, please see Figure 1.5 and Table 7.4 ). Understanding
the conformational behavior of these disaccharides is essential to identify the
relationship between the glycans' shape and their related biochemical and physi-
ological functions, e.g., in infl ammation (please see Chapter 27 ).
The conformational maps for these two natural disaccharides are illustrated in
Figure 2.3. This information can be analyzed with respect to NMR data to observe
the presence of conformers in solution [1, 6] (please see Chapter 13). Figure 2.3
clearly demonstrates that a relatively small structural change such as N - acetylation
can have infl uence on the appearance of the conformational map, here the disap-
pearance of the conformational area located in the trans region (minimum M3