Seven decades of "advances"

The field of carbohydrate science, as documented in the 70 volumes of Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry (and Biochemistry) during the years 1944 through 2014, is surveyed. Subject areas detailed in individual volumes cover a broad range to include fundamental structural studies, synthesis, reactivity, mechanisms, analytical methodology, enzymology, biological and medicinal applications, food technology, and industrial and commercial aspects. The contributions of many prominent research leaders in the carbohydrate field are recorded in biographical memoirs. Stages in the development of internationally accepted systems for naming carbohydrate structures and for their graphical depiction are noted, and indexing questions for retrieval of data are addressed.

Alchemy in eden: entrepreneurialism, branding, and food marketing in the United States, 1880–1920

Through an investigation into the origins of American food marketing, this dissertation reveals how branding—specifically, the centennial brands Quaker Oats, Coca-Cola, and Crisco—came to underpin much of today's market-driven economy. In a manner akin to alchemy, the entrepreneurs behind these three firms recognized the inherent value of an agricultural Eden, then found ways to convert common, low-cost agricultural goods—oats, sugar, and cottonseed oil—into appealing, high-revenue branded food products. In the process, these ventures devised new demand-driven business models that exploited technology and communications advances, enabling them to tap a nascent consumer culture. Their pioneering efforts generated unprecedented profits, laid the foundation for iconic billion-dollar brands, and fundamentally changed how Americans make daily food choices.

[Trehala, a meeting point between zoology, botany, chemistry, and biochemistry]

Trehala is a crude drug consisting of the pupal chambers formed by insects belonging to the genus Larinus that live on several Echinops species of the Middle-East. This sweet cocoon is locally used as human food and also for the treatment of cough and various pulmonary diseases. It first appeared in Western Europe in the collection of drugs from the Ottoman Empire displayed by François Della Sudda during the International Exhibition held in Paris in 1855. On the basis of this sample Nicolas Guibourt (1790-1867) gave, in 1858, the first full scientific description of the drug, its origin, and Larinus nidificans as the main insect species responsible for its formation. Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907) isolated in the same year the sugar trehalose from the drug and gave a full account of its physical and chemical properties. In 1876, Müntz established that trehalose was identical with mycose isolated from Claviceps purpurea by Mitscherlich.

[Sugar and the birth of dentistry]

It took mankind some ten thousand years to get sugarcane from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Once it reached Europe and the Europeans knew how to handle it, it took them only a hundred years to turn the production of sugar into the biggest industry of the world. Exactly in those hundred years the birth of modern medicine--and dentistry--is placed. This coincidence is too particular to be left unnoticed.

So what do your sugars do?

Up to about fifteen years ago the above question was quite often asked of glycoconjugates enthusiasts. It was always a silly question, the answer being 'How many doings do you want to hear about?' Since then our understanding of the structures, biosynthesis and varied functions of the glycoconjugates has developed incredibly and come to have a major impact on much of present-day biological and medical research.

Progress in deciphering the information content of the 'glycome'--a crescendo in the closing years of the millennium

The closing years of the second millennium have been uplifting for carbohydrate biology. Optimism that oligosaccharide sequences are bearers of crucial biological information has been borne out by the constellation of efforts of carbohydrate chemists, biochemists, immunochemists, and cell- and molecular biologists. The direct involvement of specific oligosaccharide sequences in protein targeting and folding, and in mechanisms of infection, inflammation and immunity is now unquestioned. With the emergence of families of proteins with carbohydrate-binding activities, assignments of information content for defined oligosaccharide sequences will become more common, but the pinpointing and elucidation of the bioactive domains on oligosaccharides will continue to pose challenges even to the most experienced carbohydrate biologists. The neoglycolipid technology incorporates some of the key requirements for this challenge: namely the resolution of complex glycan mixtures, and ligand binding coupled with sequence determination by mass spectrometry.