Abstract: Glycomics, a new subject, is specialized on research of structure and functional features of carbohydrates, especially the biological mode of actions by carbohydrates; therefore glycomics comes to be one of the hot topics of life science research. Polysaccharides and their derivers play a role of reserving various biological information during the whole life time and activities, and transferring substances intra and extra-cellular as well as between cells. At present, β-glucan is one of the most popular research subjects (i.e. carbohydrate research) in the area, among which the earliest sugar studied is Lentinan because of its immunoactivities and anticancer activities The article is a review on biological status of posaccharides, structure of β-glucans, and the relationship between the structure of βglucans and their biological functions. It is described in the article that biological activities of a glucan relate to the molar weight, solubility, branch chain, structure and crystal of the sugar. It was found that β-glucan has many different structures but one- and three-helixes are main forms of senior structures of β-glucan.

Key words: β-glucans; biological status; structure and function relationship 