Crystallography of polysaccharides: Current state and challenges

Polysaccharides are the most abundant class of biopolymers, holding an important place in biological systems and sustain-able material development. Their spatial organization and intra-and intermolecular interactions are thus of great interest. However, conventional single crystal crystallography is not applicable since polysaccharides crystallize only into tiny crystals. Several crystallographic methods have been devel-oped to extract atomic-resolution structural information from polysaccharide crystals. Small-probe single crystal diffrac-tometry, high-resolution fiber diffraction and powder diffraction combined with molecular modeling brought new insights from various types of polysaccharide crystals, and led to many high -resolution crystal structures over the past two decades. Cur-rent challenges lie in the analysis of disorder and defects by further integrating molecular modeling methods for low -resolution diffraction data.

Automated summary

Polysaccharides are abundant biopolymers with significant importance in biological systems and material development. However, conventional crystallography methods are not suitable for polysaccharide crystals due to their small size. Different crystallographic methods, such as small-probe single crystal diffraction, high-resolution fiber diffraction, and powder diffraction combined with molecular modeling, have provided new insights into the atomic-resolution structure of polysaccharide crystals. Challenges still exist in analyzing disorder and defects using low-resolution diffraction data and further integrating molecular modeling methods.