ABSTRACT
Progress in genomic and proteomic research has elevated these elds to the forefront of scientic and biomedical research. These scientic endeavors have been facilitated by many of the modern laboratory techniques at the disposal of today’s researcher. Automated synthesis of nucleic acids and peptides, rapid DNA and peptide sequencing, and gene expression prole analysis by using cDNA microarrays, protein expression systems, small interfering RNA (siRNA) gene silencing, and knockout organisms are widely used to elucidate the role of genes and proteins in biological systems. Until now, a complementary set of biophysical tools has remained out of reach to the growing discipline of glycomics and this void has greatly hindered the emergence of this eld. Glycomics, a term analogous with genomics and proteomics, is the comprehensive study of glycomes-the entire complement of sugars, whether free or present in more complex molecules, of an organism, including genetic, physiologic, pathologic, and other aspects. Glycomics “is the systematic study of all glycan structures of a given cell type or organism” and is a subset of glycobiology. The term glycomics is derived from the chemical prex for sweetness or a sugar, “glyco” and was formed to follow the naming convention established by genomics, which deals with genes, and proteomics, which deals with proteins. Glycomic analysis seeks to understand how a collection of glycans relate to a particular biological event. This includes carbohydrate-carbohydrate, carbohydrate-protein, and carbohydrate-nucleic acid interactions. Carbohydrates, in the form of glycopeptides, glycolipids, glycosaminoglycans, proteoglycans, or other glycoconjugates, have long been known to participate in a plethora of biological processes. These include viral entry, signal transduction, inammation, cell-cell interactions, bacteria-host interactions, fertility, and development. Rapid advances in the eld of glycomics, however, have been hindered by the complexity of the biomolecules involved. Due to their frequent branching and linkage diversity, oligosaccharides have greater structural complexity than nucleic acids and proteins. Furthermore, the difculty in isolating, characterizing, and synthesizing complex oligosaccharides has been a signi- cant challenge to progress in the eld. Recent chemical advances, such as improved synthetic methods, including the development of an automated solid phase synthesizer, and methods for enzymatic synthesis, have opened new and exciting possibilities in obtaining pure, chemically dened carbohydrates. At the same time, the eld has seen growing interest in the development of carbohydrate microarrays and neoglycoconjugates to facilitate otherwise laborious biological studies. By unifying synthetic advances and new biochemical tools, it is now possible to expand the tool-chest available to the glycomics researcher. This chapter illustrates the potential of some of these emerging technologies.
