Chemistry and glycobiology

Current interests in glycobiology have stimulated the development of new tools for use to tackle major problems in the field, including, for example, glycoprotein synthesis, glycan array development and post-translational glycosylation monitoring. Recent advances in the synthesis of glycoproteins involve glycoprotein remodelling, native chemical ligation (NCL), expressed protein ligation (EPL), Staudinger ligation, sugar-assisted ligation and pathway engineering to effectively produce homogeneous glycoproteins with well defined glycans for structural and functional studies. Moreover, the development of glycan synthesis, such as one-pot, chemoenzymatic and solid-supported syntheses, has greatly simplified the process in creating various glycans for functional and array study. Glycan array requires little sample and is able to test and compare many carbohydrate-protein interactions simultaneously. Finally, the changes in post-translational glycosylation, which is an indicator of disease progression, can be monitored by bioorthogonal chemical reporters with the cell's metabolic machinery. The interdisciplinary cooperation in chemistry and biology has yielded new strategies and led to an explosion of research in this field.