Leveraging mirror-image glycans in carbohydrate materials

Chirality has become a fundamental design principle to craft peptide materials. In contrast, the systematic exploitation of chirality to build glycan materials remains largely unexplored, despite the rich chiral diversity of carbohydrates, with both D- and L-configurations readily available in nature. Here, we emphasize the added value of exploring mirror-image glycans to tailor carbohydrate materials. By examining the distinctive chiral features of carbohydrates in comparison to peptides, we demonstrate how these characteristics provide powerful opportunities to modulate and elucidate the rules governing glycan assembly. We discuss examples of carbohydrate materials based on individual enantiomers, the co-assembly of racemic mixtures, and the assembly of heterochiral sequences. Each section is introduced with key insights from peptide materials, serving as inspiration and guidance for the future design of glycan assemblies.