Interpreting the sugar code with computers

Within any living organism sugars as part of many cellular building blocks regulate inter- and intra- cellular processes. To characterize glycosylation in full, computer models are becoming increasingly significant. The example of the Glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor shows that classical structure analysis with molecular dynamics techniques must be combined with system representations at coarser levels. Only in this way, many unspecific but important functions of sugar residues may be uncovered.