Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Anal Bioanal Chem. 2022 Jul;414(18):5139-5163. doi: 10.1007/s00216-022-03948-1. Epub 2022 Feb 23.
Glycans, including oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates, play an integral role in modulating the biological functions of macromolecules. Many physiological and pathological processes are mediated by interactions between glycans, which has led to the use of glycans as biosensors for pathogen and biomarker detection. Elucidating the relationship between glycan structure and biological function is critical for advancing our understanding of the impact glycans have on human health and disease and for expanding the repertoire of glycans available for bioanalysis, especially for diagnostics. Such efforts have been limited by the difficulty in obtaining sufficient quantities of homogenous glycan samples needed to resolve the exact relationships between glycan structure and their structural or modulatory functions on a given glycoconjugate. Synthetic strategies offer a viable route for overcoming these technical hurdles. In recent years, microfluidics have emerged as powerful tools for realizing high-throughput and reproducible syntheses of homogenous glycans for the potential use in functional studies. This critical review provides readers with an overview of the microfluidic technologies that have been developed for chemical and enzymatic glycan synthesis. The advantages and limitations associated with using microreactor platforms to improve the scalability, productivity, and selectivity of glycosylation reactions will be discussed, as well as suggested future work that can address certain pitfalls.
糖链（包括低聚糖和糖缀合物）在调节生物大分子的生物功能方面起着不可或缺的作用。许多生理和病理过程都是由糖链之间的相互作用介导的，这导致了糖链被用作病原体和生物标志物检测的生物传感器。阐明糖链结构与生物功能之间的关系对于深入了解糖链对人类健康和疾病的影响以及扩大用于生物分析的糖链种类（尤其是用于诊断）至关重要。然而，这些努力受到了获取足够数量的同质糖链样品的限制，这些样品是解析糖链结构与其在特定糖缀合物上的结构或调节功能之间的确切关系所必需的。合成策略为克服这些技术障碍提供了可行的途径。近年来，微流控技术已成为实现同质糖链高通量和可重复合成的有力工具，这些糖链有可能用于功能研究。这篇综述批判性地介绍了为化学和酶法糖合成而开发的微流控技术。将讨论使用微反应器平台来提高糖基化反应的可扩展性、生产率和选择性的优点和局限性，以及可以解决某些缺陷的未来工作建议。
