Marine glycobiology is an emerging and exciting area in the field of science and medicine. Glycobiology, the study of the structure and function of carbohydrates and carbohydrate-containing molecules, is fundamental to all biological systems and represents a developing field of science that has made huge advances in the last half-century. This book revolutionizes the concept of marine glycobiology, focusing on the latest principles and applications of marine glycobiology and their relationships.

Glycans (carbohydrate chains) of marine creatures are rich and diverse in polysaccharides, glycoproteins, and glycolipids. The chains that are metabolized by glycan-related enzymes (glycosyltransferases and glycosidases) are recognized by glycan-binding proteins (lectins) which regulate cellular processes such as growth, differentiation, and death. Marine glycomics that involves the genome and transcriptome accelerates our understanding of the evolution of glycans, glycan-related enzymes, and lectins. From 2017 to 2019, the Special Issue “Marine Glycobiology, Glycomics and Lectins” of the journal Marine Drugs published scientific articles and reviews, on the background of “glycobiology”—that is, glycan-based biosciences. The aim was to promote the discovery of novel biomolecules that contribute to drug development and clinical studies. This has great potential for establishing connections between the fields of both human health and marine life sciences. This book contains 11 scientific papers representing current topics in comprehensive glycosciences related to therapeutic agents from marine natural products, as outlined.

Sugar chains (glycans) are often attached to proteins and lipids and have multiple roles in the organization and function of all organisms. "Essentials of Glycobiology" describes their biogenesis and function and offers a useful gateway to the understanding of glycans.

The cell surface of fungi, bacteria and sea organisms is highly glycosylated. These glycans are oligo- or polysaccharide molecules that can be secreted or attached to protein or lipids forming glycoconjugates. They present extraordinary structural diversity that could explain their involvement in many fundamental cellular processes, including growth, differentiation and morphogenesis. Considerable advances have been made on the structural elucidation of these glycans. Their primary structures were determined based on a combination of mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy techniques. The combination of these sensitive and powerful techniques has allowed us to increase our structural knowledge of a wide variety of glycans expressed by different fungi, bacteria and sea organisms.

Advances in Botanical Research publishes in-depth and up-to-date reviews on a wide range of topics in plant sciences. The series features several reviews by recognized experts on all aspects of plant genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, physiology and ecology. This thematic volume, number 71, features reviews on sea plants. Its chapters cover topics such as the role of algae in sustainability; the status of kelp exploitation and marine agronomy; potential applications for enzymatic recovery of metabolites from seaweeds; and many more. - Publishes in-depth and up-to-date reviews on a wide range of topics in plant sciences - Features a wide range of reviews by recognized experts on all aspects of plant genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, physiology, and ecology - Volume features reviews on sea plants

This book provides the whole spectrum of polysaccharides from basic concepts to commercial market applications. Chapters cover various types of sources, classification, properties, characterization, processing, rheology and fabrication of polysaccharide-based materials and their composites and gels. The applications of polysaccharides include in cosmetics, food science, drug delivery, biomedicine, biofuel production, marine, packaging, chromatography and environmental remediation. It also reviews the fabrication of inorganic and carbon nanomaterials from polysaccharides. The book incorporates industrial applications and will fill the gap between the exploration works in the laboratory and viable applications in related ventures.

Glycans play essential roles in diverse biological and etiological processes and their structural complexity endow various functions. The glycome is the entire set of glycans produced by an individual organism. As the glycan microarray emerged, a good amount of knowledge has been obtained in understanding the functions of glycans. However, limited accessibility of glycans is a major obstacle to the functional glycomics study. Although isolation from biology samples provided some structures, the low abundance of glycans obtained and the difficulty in complete structural assignment restricted the subsequent assay. To circumvent this limitation, many synthetic strategies, including chemical, enzymatic and chemo-enzymatic ones have been developed to make libraries of structurally defined complex glycans available. The glycans provided by these techniques combined with high-throughput glycoarray techniques have broadened and deepened our understanding about functional glycomics. The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive review of the current state of the synthetic glycome and a brief introduction of the application of the synthetic glycome in glycoarray assay. Accordingly, synthetic strategies toward generating glycans with comprehensive structures as well as the glycoarrays to unveil the glycan functions are described in this book.