CarbBuilder: Software for building molecular models of complex oligo- and polysaccharide structures

CarbBuilder is a portable software tool for producing three-dimensional molecular models of carbohydrates from the simple text specification of a primary structure. CarbBuilder can generate a wide variety of carbohydrate structures, ranging from monosaccharides to large, branched polysaccharides. Version 2.0 of the software, described in this article, supports monosaccharides of both mammalian and bacterial origin and a range of substituents for derivatization of individual sugar residues. This improved version has a sophisticated building algorithm to explore the range of possible conformations for a specified carbohydrate molecule. Illustrative examples of models of complex polysaccharides produced by CarbBuilder demonstrate the capabilities of the software. CarbBuilder is freely available under the Artistic License 2.0 from . (c) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.