Polysaccharides are naturally abundant macromolecular substances consisting of many monosaccharide units linked by glycosidic bonds. The (bio)chemical and physical properties of polysaccharides are diverse and variable due to the diversity of monosaccharide species, stereostructures, linear/branched structures, molecular weights, and so on. Polysaccharides have high potential as environmentally friendly or biologically active/inert polymeric materials in various fields such as food, daily necessity, medical care, etc. Many fascinating findings on science and technology of polysaccharides have been accumulated to date. However, there are still intriguing issues to be solved on the fundamental aspects of polysaccharides in all directions, including production methods, structures, physical properties, and functions. Therefore, the range of applications of polysaccharides is still expanding even in recent years.
 In this context, the Editor-in-Chief and associate editors proposed a special issue on emerging topics in carbohydrate polymers, including polysaccharides of natural/unnatural origin and polysaccharide-based synthetic polymers. In this issue, we focus on chemical modification of naturally occurring polysaccharides [1], in vitro enzymatic synthesis of poly-/oligosaccharides and their functional derivatives [2,3,4], characterizations of assembly structures or chain conformations of chemically modified/unmodified polysaccharides [5,6,7,8,9], biological/medical functions of naturally occurring polysaccharides [6, 10,11,12,13,14], hybrid/composite materials [15,16,17,18,19], and fiberization technology [20], covering a wide range of topics from the fundamentals to applications of carbohydrate polymers.
 Polymer Journal has published special issues on biorelated polymers in the past [21,22,23]. We are very much confident that this issue will inspire many readers who are active in various fields of polymer science/technology and contribute to the further development of carbohydrate polymers in the future. Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors and reviewers who contributed to this issue.
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Serizawa, T., Ikeda, M. & Tanaka, K. Special issue: Fundamentals and applications of carbohydrate polymers. Polym J 54, 385–386 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-021-00608-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-021-00608-6
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