Carbohydrate recognition Peptide-based biomimetic receptors

Carbohydrate recognition is one of the most sophisticated recognition processes in biological systems. Given the importance of carbohydrate recognition, it is not surprising that design and synthesis of artificial receptors for these important biological substrates has attracted a great deal of attention in biomimetic chemistry. Among various approaches, peptides offer enormous diversity and potential for design and synthesis of selective carbohydrate receptors. Current efforts are mainly focused on the design of receptors for monosaccharides or short oligosaccharides. Flexible as well as conformationally preorganized peptides capable of binding simple carbohydrates in water with affinities comparable to lectins have been prepared. Advances in this field may help the development of new molecular probes for variety of bioanalytical and biomedical applications.