Sugars remain ubiquitous yet enigmatic, combining the simple with the complex.
Their work has lead to major advances in such diverse subjects as chemical synthesis, analytical chemistry, structural biology, and cell-surface recognition. At a time when carbohydrates should be embraced by the scientific community with ever increasing vigor, we are delighted to present reviews from some of the leading carbohydrate research groups in this thematic issue. Steinborn and Junicke review the diversity of structures formed when platinum-group metals are bound to carbohydrates. Ferrero and Gotor review biocatalytic modifications of nucleosides, carbocyclic nucleosides, and C-nucleosides. Solid-phase methods for oligosaccharide synthesis and combinatorial libraries are described by Seeberger and Haase.