Sugars, from simple monosaccharides to longer, branched oligosaccharides are ubiquitous in biology. They are present in the headgroups of some lipids, as post-translational modifications to proteins, the backbone of nucleic acids, in the bacterial cell walls and as individual saccharides in solution in many cellular and extracellular environments. Whether present by themselves or as part of glycosylated macromolecules, sugars serve a range of functional roles (e.g. signalling pathways , formation of binding sites , stabilization of proteins , and as osmolytes ), indeed many of their roles are yet to be determined . Inherent difficulties of resolving the structures of sugars attached to proteins have often resulted in their neglect in structure-function relationships.