Escherichia coli O-antigen database (ECODAB) is aweb-based application to support the collection of E. coli O-antigen structures, polymerase and flippase amino acid sequences, NMR chemical shift data of O-antigens as well as information on glycosyltransferases (GTs) involved in the assembly of O-antigen polysaccharides. The database content has been compiled from scientific literature. Furthermore, the system has evolved from being a repository to one that can be used for generating novel data on its own. GT specificity is suggested through sequence comparison with GTs whose function is known. The migration of ECODAB to a relational database has allowed the automation of all processes to update, retrieve and present information, thereby, endowing the system with greater flexibility and improved overall performance. ECODAB is freely available at http://www.casper.organ.su.se/ECODAB/. Currently, data on 169 E. coli unique O-antigen entries and 338 GTs is covered. Moreover, the scope of the database has been extended so that polysaccharide structure and related information from other bacteria subsequently can be added, for example, from Streptococcus pneumoniae.

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.

CarbBuilder is a portable software tool for producing three-dimensional molecular models of carbohydrates from the simple text specification of a primary structure. CarbBuilder can generate a wide variety of carbohydrate structures, ranging from monosaccharides to large, branched polysaccharides. Version 2.0 of the software, described in this article, supports monosaccharides of both mammalian and bacterial origin and a range of substituents for derivatization of individual sugar residues. This improved version has a sophisticated building algorithm to explore the range of possible conformations for a specified carbohydrate molecule. Illustrative examples of models of complex polysaccharides produced by CarbBuilder demonstrate the capabilities of the software. CarbBuilder is freely available under the Artistic License 2.0.

Carbohydrate structure can be elucidated or confirmed by using NMR spectroscopy as the prime technique. Prediction of ¹H and ¹³C NMR chemical shifts by computational approaches makes this assignment process more efficient and the program CASPER can perform this task rapidly. It does so by relying on chemical shift data of mono-, di-, and trisaccharides. In order to improve accuracy and quality of these predictions we have assigned ¹H and ¹³C NMR chemical shifts of 30 monosaccharides, 17 disaccharides, 10 trisaccharides and one tetrasaccharide; in total 58 compounds. Due to different rotamers, ring forms, α- and β-anomeric forms and pD conditions this resulted in 74 ¹H and ¹³C NMR chemical shift data sets, all of which were refined using total line-shape analysis for the ¹H resonances in order to obtain accurate chemical shifts. Subsequent NMR chemical shift predictions for three sialic acid-containing oligosaccharides, viz., GD1a, a disialyl-LNnT hexasaccharide and a polysialic acid-lactose decasaccharide, and NMR-based structural elucidations of two O-antigen polysaccharides from E. coli O174 were performed by the CASPER program (http://www.casper.organ.su.se/casper/) resulting in very good to excellent agreement between experimental and predicted data thereby demonstrating its utility for carbohydrate compounds that have been chemically or enzymatically synthesized, structurally modified or isolated from nature.