CHAPTER 15: NMR Chemical Shift Predictions and Structural Elucidation of Oligo- and Polysaccharides by the Computer Program CASPER

Glycans are often linked to proteins or lipids in the form of glycoconjugates but these highly complex molecules also have biological functions as oligosaccharides per se. The limited dispersion in NMR spectra of carbohydrates makes their analysis and interpretation very cumbersome. The computer program CASPER, which is a web-based tool, facilitates prediction ¹H and ¹³C NMR chemical shifts of oligo- or polysaccharide structures defined by the user, makes it possible to carry out an NMR-based sugar analysis including determination of absolute configuration and to perform structure elucidation of unknown glycans using unassigned NMR spectra as input to the program. The output from the program contains, inter alia, tentatively assigned NMR resonances, proposed sugar components, structural suggestions ranked according to the similarity between their predicted chemical shifts and the experimental data as well as 3D structures in pdb-format generated seamlessly by the CarbBuilder program as a part of the CASPER-GUI.