The need for improved analytical methods inc complex carbohydrate science grows unabated by impressive gains in our knowledge of the structures and functions of these fascinating molecules. The pressure for more powerful technologies is fueled by the many physiologically important recognition events mediated by protein-carbohydrate interactions and by the roles of carbohydrate interactions and by the roles of carbohydrates in such important biomedical functions as inflammatory reactions, hormone action, cancer viral infections, and cell differentiation.. The two proposed Technological Research and Development Projects of this Resource Center are tightly integrated around the central theme of developing technologies for studies of complex carbohydrates. The resulting technologies are disseminated to the scientific community through publications; many internal and external collaborative workshops, seminars, and lectures at scientific meetings; through interactions with many corporations; and through analyses of samples submitted to the Center's service personnel. One of the proposed Technological Research and Development Projects is entitled, """"""""Using Integrated Technologies to Study Oligosacharide-Protein Interactions."""""""" This Project, proposed by six senior investigators and their research items, utilizes techniques of molecular biology, biochemistry, analytical chemistry, synthetic chemistry, physical chemistry and computational chemistry to improve our ability to determine the three-dimensional shapes of oligosaccharide binding sites of proteins and of oligosacharides when they occupy the binding sites. The other proposed Technological Research and Development Project is entitled """"""""Glycoscience Bioinformatics,"""""""" which integrates the technologies of three senior investigators and their research teams to design and build NMR, mass spectrometric, and infrared spectral databases with artificial neural network pattern recognition search engines. Currently,, five databases and their search engines are located on this center's Web site (www.ccrc.uga.edu). The goal of this project is to allow researchers to submit spectra of complex carbohydrates to the databases and have the search program identify the structure of the carbohydrate defined by the spectrum. The databases, although only a few months in operation and very incomplete, have already been searched several thousand times.
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