CarbBuilder: Software for building molecular models of complex oligo- and polysaccharide structures
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Updated: Mar 19, 2026

Hierarchical and Programmable One-Pot Oligosaccharide Synthesis
Published on: September 6, 2019
Michelle M Kuttel1, Jonas Ståhle2, Göran Widmalm2
1Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 7701, South Africa.
Abstract:
CarbBuilder is a portable software tool for producing three-dimensional molecular models of carbohydrates from the simple text specification of a primary structure. CarbBuilder can generate a wide variety of carbohydrate structures, ranging from monosaccharides to large, branched polysaccharides. Version 2.0 of the software, described in this article, supports monosaccharides of both mammalian and bacterial origin and a range of substituents for derivatization of individual sugar residues. This improved version has a sophisticated building algorithm to explore the range of possible conformations for a specified carbohydrate molecule. Illustrative examples of models of complex polysaccharides produced by CarbBuilder demonstrate the capabilities of the software. CarbBuilder is freely available under the Artistic License 2.0 from https://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~mkuttel/Downloads.html. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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