CHAPTER 16: NMR Databases for Plant Cell Wall Biopolymers

Two databases providing access to NMR data for plant cell wall biopolymers are described. XGOA-DB is a highly focused database designed to provide insight into the structures of xyloglucan oligoglycosyl alditols using chemical shift data extracted from their ¹H NMR spectra. XGOA-DB leverages the commonly used nomenclature for xyloglucan structure to generate queries and tabular results that are readily interpreted by the analyst to identify correlations between chemical shifts and specific structural motifs. CeWaN is being developed as a much more flexible database designed to reveal such correlations for the diverse biopolymers found in the plant cell wall. CeWaN uses the GLYDE-II format to represent biopolymer structure and takes advantage of its ability to specify atom connection tables to infer scalar coupling of nuclei within each molecule it describes. This makes it possible for CeWaN to provide information about crosspeaks observed by NMR correlation spectroscopy, thereby establishing them as two-dimensional structure reporters.