Abstract
For the purpose of elucidating the biological information included in the sugar chains of glycoconjugates, and of using them for the understanding of biology, glycobiology has launched. In contrast to nucleic acids and proteins, sugar chains of many different structures can be formed by using a small number of monosaccharide units. Finding of a series of structural rules in the sugar chains enabled us to consider the functions of sugar chains on their structural basis. Recent finding of a novel group of sugar chains in dystroglycan further expanded this novel scientific field of molecular biology.
