Adua Eric, Russell Alyce, Roberts Peter, Wang Youxin, Song Manshu, Wang Wei
1 School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University , Perth, Australia .
2 Beijing Key Laboratory of Clinical Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Capital Medical University , Beijing, China .
OMICS. 2017 Apr;21(4):183-196. doi: 10.1089/omi.2017.0035.
Despite decades of investment in biomarker research, we still do not have robust and field-tested biomarkers for many chronic diseases so as to anticipate clinical outcomes and thus move toward personalized medicine. Biomarker innovations have tended to focus on genomics, but next-generation biomarkers from the nascent field of glycomics now offer fresh vistas for innovation in chronic disease biomarkers and systems diagnostics. Glycosylation, regarded as a complex enzymatic process where sugars (glycans) bind to proteins and lipids, affects many human biological functions, including cell signaling, adhesion, and motility. Notably, and contrary to proteins, glycan biosynthesis does not require a template; rather its final structure is catalyzed by a repertoire of enzymes that attach or detach monosaccharides in the glycosylation pathway, making glycomics research more challenging than proteomics or genomics. Yet, given glycans' biological significance, alterations in their processing may be detrimental to human health and also offer insights for preventive medicine and wellness interventions. Therefore, studying glycans' structure and understanding their function and molecular interactions in the emerging field of glycomics are key to unraveling the pathogenesis of various common chronic diseases. This review summarizes the major concepts in glycomics, including glycan release methods, techniques for large-scale glycan analysis, and glycoinformatic tools for data handling and storage. In all, this analysis on glycomics offers strategies to build a robust postgenomic innovation roadmap for glycan-driven biomarkers as the field is anticipated to mature further and gain greater prominence in the near future.
尽管在生物标志物研究方面投入了数十年，但对于许多慢性疾病，我们仍未拥有经过充分验证和实地测试的生物标志物，以预测临床结果并迈向个性化医疗。生物标志物的创新往往集中在基因组学上，但新兴的糖组学领域中的新一代生物标志物，为慢性病生物标志物和系统诊断的创新提供了新的视角。糖基化被视为一个复杂的酶促过程，其中糖类（聚糖）与蛋白质和脂质结合，影响许多人类生物学功能，包括细胞信号传导、黏附和运动。值得注意的是，与蛋白质不同，聚糖生物合成不需要模板；相反，其最终结构由一系列在糖基化途径中连接或去除单糖的酶催化，这使得糖组学研究比蛋白质组学或基因组学更具挑战性。然而，鉴于聚糖的生物学意义，其加工过程的改变可能对人类健康有害，也为预防医学和健康干预提供了见解。因此，在新兴的糖组学领域研究聚糖的结构、理解其功能和分子相互作用，是揭示各种常见慢性病发病机制的关键。本综述总结了糖组学的主要概念，包括聚糖释放方法、大规模聚糖分析技术以及用于数据处理和存储的糖信息学工具。总之，随着该领域预计在不久的将来进一步成熟并获得更大的突出地位，对糖组学的这一分析提供了为基于聚糖的生物标志物构建强大的后基因组创新路线图的策略。
