Contribution of carbohydrate histochemistry to glycobiology.

The physiological importance of carbohydrate biology has gradually emerged from a lot of recent information on protein-carbohydrate and carbohydrate-carbohydrate interaction in normal and pathological conditions. After considering the conventional methods which allowed researchers to differentiate glycan-containing macromolecules from other complex compounds (nucleic acids, proteins), selected topics of intracellular and cellular organ architecture are focused upon in which the use of lectins and neoglycoproteins as histochemical reagents has opened new horizons for the localization of glycoconjugates in situ and the elucidation of their often still enigmatic functions. The authors hope to place into perspective that such glycohistochemical studies will strongly contribute to the progress in the dynamically growing field of glycobiology.