Computation techniques in the conformational analysis of carbohydrates

A growing number of modern studies of carbohydrates is devoted to spatial mechanisms of their participation in the cell recognition processes and directed design of inhibitors of these processes. Any progress in this field is impossible without the development of theoretical conformational analysis of carbohydrates. In this review, we generalize literature data on the potentialities of using of different molecular-mechanic force fields, the methods of quantum mechanics, and molecular dynamics to study the conformation of glycoside bond. A possibility of analyzing the reactivity of carbohydrates with the computation techniques is also discussed in brief.