Glycobiology Research and Training Center, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
OMICS. 2010 Aug;14(4):455-64. doi: 10.1089/omi.2009.0148.
The glycome is defined as the glycan repertoire of cells, tissues, and organisms, as found under specified conditions. The vastly diverse glycome is generated by a nontemplate driven biosynthesis, which is indirectly encoded in the genome, and very dynamic. Due to this overwhelming diversity, glycomic analysis must be approached at different hierarchical levels of complexity. In this review five such levels of complexity and the experimental approaches used for analysis at each level are discussed for a subclass of the glycome: the sialome. The sialome, in analogy to the canopy of a forest, covers the cell membrane with diverse array of complex sialylated structures. Sialome complexity includes modification of sialic acid core structure (the leaves and flowers), the linkage to the underlying sugar (the stems), the identity, and arrangement of the underlying glycans (the branches), the structural attributes of the underlying glycans (the trees), and finally, the spatial organization of the sialoglycans in relation to components of the intact cell surface (the forest). Understanding the full complexity of the sialome thus requires combined analyses at multiple levels, that is, the sialome is far more than the sum of its parts.
糖组学被定义为细胞、组织和生物体的聚糖组成，这些聚糖是在特定条件下发现的。由于非模板驱动的生物合成，糖组学具有极大的多样性，而这种生物合成是间接编码在基因组中的，并且非常动态。由于这种压倒性的多样性，糖组学分析必须在不同的复杂性层次上进行。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了糖组学的一个子类——唾液酸组学的五个这样的复杂性层次，以及在每个层次上进行分析所使用的实验方法。与森林的树冠类似，唾液酸组学用各种复杂的唾液酸化结构覆盖细胞膜。唾液酸组学的复杂性包括唾液酸核心结构的修饰（树叶和花朵）、与底层糖的连接（茎干）、底层聚糖的身份和排列（树枝）、底层聚糖的结构属性（树木），以及最后，唾液糖在完整细胞表面与其他成分的空间组织（森林）。因此，要全面了解唾液酸组学的复杂性，需要在多个层次上进行综合分析，也就是说，唾液酸组学远远超出了其各个部分的总和。
