Cell-cell interactions play an important role in the development, maintenance, and pathogenesis of tissues. They are highly dynamic processes which include migration, recognition, signaling, adhesion, and finally attachment. Cells on their pathway to a final location have to pass and interact with their substratum formed of matrix and cell layers. Testing and recognition are important keys for the proper result of tissue formation. They can, however, also lead to diseases when they are misused in pathological situations, by microorganisms or malignant cells, for instance.
Carbohydrates, which are the most prominent surface-exposed structures, must play an important role as recognition molecules in such processes. The rich variability of carbohydrate sequences which cell surfaces can present to lectins, adhesion molecules, and other ligands creates a refined pattern of potential attachment sites. The subtle control of the surface presentation density can provide variations in attachment strength. Not only the carbohydrate sequences but also the fact that carbohydrates can be branched while proteins cannot and that the oligosaccharide chains can be attached to the protein backbone in different densities and patterns will create yet more interaction possibilities.
Maximal use of the combinatorial richness of carbohydrate molecules would be made when carbohydrate sequences could interact with other carbohydrate sequences. Such interactions have only very rarely been considered for biochemically and biologically relevant situations since they are difficult to measure. A few are known and will be summarized here with the hope that this wealth of possible chemical interactions may be considered more and more by surface cell biochemists when analyzing fine tuning in cellular interactions.