ABSTRACT
HANS-J.GABIUS1, NICOLAI V.BOVIN2, ULRICH BRINCK3, SIGRUN GABIUS4, CARLO UNVERZAGT5 and KLAUS KAYSER6
1Institut für Physiologische Chemie, Tierärztliche Fakultät, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München, Veterinärstraße 13, D-80539 München, Germany
2Shemyakin Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Miklukho-Maklaya 16/10, Moscow, Russia
3Zentrum Pathologie, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Robert-Koch-Straße 40, D-37075 Göttingen, Germany
4Hämatologisch-Onkologische Schwerpunktpraxis, Sternstraße 12, D-83022 Rosenheim, Germany
5Institut für Organische Chemie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Karlstraße 23, D-80333 München, Germany
INTRODUCTION
Biological information transfer governs the social behavior of cells and thus the organization of organs and tissues. Defects and disorders in the exquisitely adjusted regulatory processes will cause disease states of varying degrees of severity. Any reliable delineation of a molecular aberration will be the basis to devise, if possible, efficient therapeutic strategies to correct the pinpointed dysregulation. Since histochemical analysis can provide detailed information on the presence of the defined epitopes under scrutiny and their spatial distribution, its application is an important step to unravel the inherent mechanisms which establish the complex structures at the different levels of cellular organization. Generally, antibodies afford the opportunity to describe the localization of a distinct determinant. The monitoring of expression of a gene for a certain protein can also be shifted to the level of ribonucleic acid, referring to the popular technique of in situ hybridization. When considering these two approaches, information storage is implicitly performed by two well-investigated code systems, i.e. the ensembles of four nucleotides and twenty-one proteinogenic amino acids. Quite frequently, textbooks nourish the notion that vital information transfer is exclusively confined to these two biological alphabets. However, recent work in the fields of glycosciences has convincingly proven the inadequacy of this preconception (for an overview, see Gabius and Gabius, 1993, 1997). We are now not only witnessing the emergence of the concept of a third code system. Moreover, it is becoming obvious that its coding capacity surpasses by orders of magnitude that of the familiar oligoand polymeric structures consisting of nucleotides and amino acids. This newly recognized code system is established by a panel of monosaccharides.
