Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Chem Commun (Camb). 2011 Jun 14;47(22):6201-7. doi: 10.1039/c0cc04359a. Epub 2011 Apr 18.
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.
目前糖生物学领域的研究兴趣激发了新工具的发展，这些工具可用于解决该领域的主要问题，例如糖蛋白的合成、糖基化阵列的开发和翻译后糖基化的监测。糖蛋白合成方面的最新进展包括糖蛋白重塑、天然化学连接（NCL）、表达蛋白连接（EPL）、Staudinger 连接、糖辅助连接和途径工程，这些方法可有效地生产具有明确糖基的均一糖蛋白，用于结构和功能研究。此外，聚糖合成的发展，如一锅法、化学酶法和固相合成，极大地简化了为功能和阵列研究创造各种聚糖的过程。糖基化阵列需要的样品很少，能够同时测试和比较许多碳水化合物-蛋白质相互作用。最后，翻译后糖基化的变化，即疾病进展的指标，可以通过与细胞代谢机制相关的生物正交化学报告分子进行监测。化学和生物学的跨学科合作产生了新的策略，并导致该领域的研究呈爆炸式增长。
