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Commentary

Nature Chemical Biology 5, 368–372 (1 June 2009) | doi:10.1038/nchembio0609-368

Chemical glycobiology: why now?

Peter H Seeberger

The structure of carbohydrates—hexoses to be precise—posed one of the earliest chemical mysteries. Emil Fischer, a grandfather of chemical biologists, relied on phenyl hydrazine to elucidate the stereochemistry and constitution of these cyclic molecules in the 1880s (ref.