Editorial [Hot Topic: Carbohydrate Chemistry (Guest Editor: Zbigniew J. Witczak) ]

Welcome to the sixth issue of Current Organic Chemistry devoted to carbohydrate chemistry.1-5 This special issue contains presentations from Memorial Symposium organized during 233th American Chemical Society National Meeting on March 25- 29, 2007, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. which was dedicated to the late Professor Alexander Zamojski from Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, and organized by us. The collection of reviews was contributed by internationally recognized experts and compiled sequentially in order of their importance and specificity of topics. The first review, entitled “Zamojski's Total Synthesis of Racemic Monosaccharides as an Inspiration for Stereoselective Transformation of Readily Available Sugar Synthons” by Professor Marek Chmielewski and co-workers Sebastian Stecko, Wioletta Kosnik (Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland), examines historically significant information published thus far on the topic of utilization of functionalized carbohydrate synthons as universal templates to number of new analogs of isomeric monosaccharides. The second review contribution by Professor Slawomir Jarosz (Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw, Poland) describes a new carbohydrate chemistry challenge: “From Higher Carbon Sugar Analogs to Carbocyclic Sugar Mimics”. The review covers many various new aspects of carbohydrate carbocycles as applied to synthetic carbohydrate chemistry. The fundamentally important topic of nucleic acids has been an enduring theme in the life science of carbohydrate chemistry: Drs. Roman Bielski and Michal Tencer (Value Recovery Inc. Bridgeport NJ, U.S.A/Canada) set out the principles and procedures for these endeavors and contribute an excellent review entitled “Why is ribose sugar component of nucleic acids? New Insights into Absolute Enantioselective Synthesis and Separation” Continuation of nucleic acid topics is a subject of highly specialized review entitled: “Effect of Rp and Sp-phosphorothioate substitution at the scissile site of the cleavage activity of the Deoxyribozyme 10-23” by Professors Barbara Nawrot and Wojciech J. Stec and co-workers Kinga Widera, Milena Sobczak and Marzena Wojcik (Center of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies of Polish Academy of Science, Lodz, Poland). Random glycosylation topics is explored in very informative review entitled: “Synthesis of Oligosaccharide Libraries by Random Glycosylation” contributed by Professor Joachim Thiem and co-workers Andreas Steinmann, Julian Thimm, and Nicolai Wollik (University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany) Finally, Professor Paul Kosma (University of Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources, Wien, Austria) contributes a review of “Occurrence, Synthesis and Biosynthesis of Bacterial Heptoses”. This critically important topic is often unappreciated by synthetic carbohydrate chemists and by highlighting the significance of these chemical classes of carbohydrates should give a better understanding and appreciation of carbohydrates. I kindly thank all the authors for their diligent efforts in producing such an informed and enlightened collection for this special issue and I welcome suggestions and ideas for topics of future issues.