The past 10 years has seen a proliferation of the number of ionic liquids that
have extensively been used in organic synthesis as solvents and/or catalysts in chemical
as well enzymatic reactions, simply due to their interesting and attractive features viz.
simple handling, tunable properties, benign environmental character, catalytic activity,
and excellent recyclability, whereas their interest in various different branches of
science is expanding exponentially. Carbohydrates-containing molecules are identified
to play pivotal roles in various pathologically and physiologically important biological
processes including cellular recognition, adhesion, migration, invasion, communication,
bacterial and viral infection, tumor metastasis etc. and thus about clear understanding of
role of sugars in these important biological events has led to the increased demand for
significant amounts of carbohydrate based molecules for complete chemical, biological,
medicinal, and pharmacological investigations. Therefore, tremendous efforts have been
made to develop novel and facile procedures for the synthesis of sugar based molecules
of great biological interest. In the last 10 years, room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs)
have been emerged as promising solvents for modification of carbohydrates into
desirable scaffolds; however, there is lack of recent and concise reports dealing with the
RTILs in the field of carbohydrate chemistry particularly, in relevance to dissolution
and functionalization, and glycosylation. This chapter highlights the rapid increase in
novel applications of discovered RTILs in carbohydrate chemistry.
Keywords: Glycosylation, cellulose, carboxamides, dihydropyrimidin-2-one/thione,
glycosides, glycopyranosides, hydroxymethylfurfural, fructose, peracetylation, trisaccharides,
perbenzoylation, oligosaccharides, benzylidenation, hexapyranosides,
enzyme, N-acetyl lactosamine, acylation, sulfoxidation, starch, bio-polymer,
saccharification.