Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Korea.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Institute for Biomedicine, Gothenburg University, 413 90 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Dec 8;21(24):9336. doi: 10.3390/ijms21249336.
Glycosylation plays a crucial role in various diseases and their etiology. This has led to a clear understanding on the functions of carbohydrates in cell communication, which eventually will result in novel therapeutic approaches for treatment of various disease. Glycomics has now become one among the top ten technologies that will change the future. The direct implication of glycosylation as a hallmark of cancer and for cancer therapy is well established. As in proteomics, where bioinformatics tools have led to revolutionary achievements, bioinformatics resources for glycosylation have improved its practical implication. Bioinformatics tools, algorithms and databases are a mandatory requirement to manage and successfully analyze large amount of glycobiological data generated from glycosylation studies. This review consolidates all the available tools and their applications in glycosylation research. The achievements made through the use of bioinformatics into glycosylation studies are also presented. The importance of glycosylation in cancer diagnosis and therapy is discussed and the gap in the application of widely available glyco-informatic tools for cancer research is highlighted. This review is expected to bring an awakening amongst glyco-informaticians as well as cancer biologists to bridge this gap, to exploit the available glyco-informatic tools for cancer.
糖基化在各种疾病及其病因中起着至关重要的作用。这使得人们对碳水化合物在细胞通讯中的功能有了清晰的认识，最终将为各种疾病的治疗带来新的治疗方法。糖组学现在已成为将改变未来的十大技术之一。糖基化作为癌症的标志和癌症治疗的标志已经得到了明确的证实。就像蛋白质组学一样，生物信息学工具带来了革命性的成就，糖基化的生物信息学资源也提高了其实际意义。生物信息学工具、算法和数据库是管理和成功分析从糖基化研究中产生的大量糖生物学数据的强制性要求。这篇综述整合了所有现有的工具及其在糖基化研究中的应用。还介绍了通过使用生物信息学在糖基化研究中取得的成果。讨论了糖基化在癌症诊断和治疗中的重要性，并强调了广泛可用的糖生物信息学工具在癌症研究中的应用差距。预计这篇综述将引起糖生物信息学家和癌症生物学家的觉醒，以弥合这一差距，利用现有的糖生物信息学工具来研究癌症。
