“…This knowledge is mainly based on an enormous extension and improvement of the methodologies for structural analysis (Vliegenthart et al, 1983;Hounsell, this volume) and for chemical synthesis (Schmidt, 1986(Schmidt, , 1989(Schmidt, , 1994Paulsen, 1990;Jung and Schmidt, 1991;Banoub, 1992;Kunz, 1993;Toshima and Tatsata, 1993;Barresi and Hindsgaul, 1995;Khan et al, 1996;Whitfield and Douglas, 1996), as will be outlined below. The synthesis of glycosides, oligosaccharides, and glycoconjugates is characterized by a much larger number of possibilities for coupling than that of other biopolymers, such as peptides or proteins and ribo-or deoxyribo-nucleotides.…”