Stories by Nathan Sharon

Telltale surface sugars enable cells to identify and interact with one another. New drugs aimed at those carbohydrates could stop infection and inflammation

Sugars and chains of sugar units are the most abundant consdtuent of living matter. New carbohydrates are still being discovered, as are new roles for them in normal biological processes and disease

These proteins found primarily in plants combine specifically with sugars on cell surfaces and hence bind cells together. They are key tools in the study of the role the cell surface plays in cell behavior

Many proteins have sugars linked to them as side chains. The function of these saccharide groups is not known in all cases, but they may radically alter the properties of the molecule

The tough, inflexible envelope that surrounds a bacterium is a single giant molecule made up of amino acid and sugar units. Its formation is blocked by drugs such as penicillin