The Sugars on the Outside of a Cell

People just didn't think they were important. When I started looking at the structures of these molecules, they're beautiful and complicated and spectacular. And I had a mental picture in my head of the surface of your cell being coated with a kelp forest. But I like now to think of it as a two dimensional barcode. Every cell now is coated on its surface with a QR code. There's information in that QR code and it's the pattern of the sugars. Other cells of your body have the reader to scan the code to understand what's going on with the cell.