Source files of the Carbohydrate Structure Database: the way to sophisticated analysis of natural glycans

The Carbohydrate Structure Database (CSDB, http://csdb.glycoscience.ru/) is a free curated repository storing various data on glycans of bacterial, fungal and plant origins. Currently, it maintains a close-to-full coverage on bacterial and fungal carbohydrates up to the year 2020. The CSDB web-interface provides free access to the database content and dedicated tools. Still, the number of these tools and the types of the corresponding analyses is limited, whereas the database itself contains data that can be used in a broader scope of analytical studies. In this paper, we present CSDB source data files and a self-contained SQL dump, and exemplify their possible application in glycan-related studies. By using CSDB in an SQL format, the user can gain access to the chain length distribution or charge distribution (as an example) in a given set of glycans defined according to specific structural, taxonomic, or other parameters, whereas the source text dump files can be imported to any dedicated database with a specific internal architecture differing from that of CSDB.