Figure 7.

An extrapolated structural model for the N-glycan core in an aqueous environment. In the absence of water (a), the pentasaccharide would adopt a compact conformation, but the interactions between the building blocks of the core pentasaccharide and water (b) lead, in solution (c), to a rigid chitobiose stem that is anchored at one end to the peptide^10,11,59 and at the other, through a flexible ‘pivot’, to a β-mannosyl structure that projects the information-rich distal head of the glycan for interaction with other partners. The red dots indicate favored water-bridging sites identified here or in previous investigations.¹⁵