COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATE RESEARCH CENTER

The CCRC is the home to the University of Georgia Cancer Center and to four federally designated centers for carbohydrate research: the Department of Energy (DOE)-funded Center for Plant and Microbial Complex Carbohydrates, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/NCRR Research Resource for Integrated Glycotechnology, the NIH/NCRR Integrated Technology Resource for Biomedical Glycomics, and an NSF Functional Genomics Center: A Monoclonal Antibody Toolkit for Functional Genomics of Plant Cell Walls. As a federal center, the CCRC provides analytical services to scientists in university, government, or industrial laboratories who are interested in complex carbohydrate molecules and offers two one-week, hands-on, laboratory training courses every summer in the techniques used to analyze complex carbohydrates.

CCRC faculty members hold joint appointments in the departments of biochemistry and molecular biology, chemistry, plant biology, and plant pathology.

The CCRC's 18 interdisciplinary research groups study the structures and functions of the complex carbohydrates of plants, microbes, and animals to determine the role of carbohydrates in growth and development, host-pathogen interactions, and disease processes. These groups develop and use advanced analytical techniques, including mass spectrometry, NMR spectroscopy, chemical and enzymatic synthesis, computer modeling, cell and molecular biology, and immunocytochemistry. The members of each research group interact closely with one another to take full advantage of the knowledge and experience in all aspects of complex carbohydrate science available at the CCRC.

The Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC) was founded at the University of Georgia (UGA) in September 1985 to answer the national need for a center devoted to increasing knowledge of the structures and functions of complex carbohydrates. Evidence was rapidly growing of the key roles these molecules play in a broad range of biological recognition and regulatory phenomena -- cellular communication, gene expression, immunology, organism defense mechanisms, growth and development. As this area of research had been a relatively under-funded and under-staffed endeavor in the United States, it was essential to direct more research attention and investment toward elucidating the chemical structures and biological functions of the oligo- and polysaccharides involved in these processes, to train more glycoscientists, and to bring together the multidisciplinary expertise and the expensive instrumentation required to serve the scientific community.