Designer starches are closer than ever thanks to 'click chemistry'. 

Sergey Nepogodiev and co-workers at the University of East Anglia, UK, used 'click chemistry' - where a sequence of the most reliable, clean and high yielding reactions are used to 'click' together component pieces of a target molecule - to make oligosaccharides, the building blocks of starch. Their approach allows much larger and more complex oligosaccharides to be made than was previously possible. 

Designer starches are being developed for use as molecular capsules for improved drug delivery, or biodegradable films to replace plastics in packaging. But these clever carbohydrates have proved a daunting synthetic challenge. 

With an efficient synthetic route now established, Nepogodiev's team hope to be able to build and study starches with particular properties. Once this relationship is understood, they predict designer carbohydrates quickly becoming a reality.   

James Crow