| Detailed analysis of carbohydrate structures associated with glycosylation remains a major analytical challenge that requires sophisticated instrumentation and a variety of sample preparation strategies. These samples are often available only in limited quantities of each glycoform. Therefore, sensitive techniques that are highly reproducible are required for the structure determination of oligosaccharides.;All sugars are polyalcohols. Modifications to these sugars include the presence of an amine group, a carboxylic acid group, and/or an acetal group. All reducing sugars also are in equilibrium either as a ketone or aldehyde. The chemistry of each of these groups can be taken advantage of to improve detection and structural determination through derivatization. These reactions provide for analysis specificity and, through the formation of derivatives, detectability and structural information can be obtained.;The techniques used for the separation and detection of phosphorilated and sulfated saccharides are similar to the techniques used for saccharides. The attempts to resolve the biosynthesis of Sulphoquinovosediacylglycerol so far have proven fruitless. Only recently has it become feasible to rigorously test the different chemical and genetic approaches. Work on determining the biosynthetic pathway has fallen into two areas: the sulfoglycolytic pathway, and the sugar-nucleotide pathway. |
