Glycan and Life Systems Integration Center (GaLSIC), Soka University, Tokyo, Japan.
Methods Mol Biol. 2022;2499:135-144. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2317-6_6.
Glycosylation involves the attachment of carbohydrate sugar chains, or glycans, onto an amino acid residue of a protein. These glycans are often branched structures and serve to modulate the function of proteins. Glycans are synthesized through a complex process of enzymatic reactions that occur in the Golgi apparatus in mammalian systems. Because there is currently no sequencer for glycans, technologies such as mass spectrometry is used to characterize glycans in a biological sample to ascertain its glycome. This is a tedious process that requires high levels of expertise and equipment. Thus, the enzymes that work on glycans, called glycogenes or glycoenzymes, have been studied to better understand glycan function. With the development of glycan-related databases and a glycan repository, bioinformatics approaches have attempted to predict the glycosylation pathway and the glycosylation sites on proteins. This chapter introduces these methods and related Web resources for understanding glycan function.
糖基化涉及将碳水化合物糖链（或聚糖）连接到蛋白质的氨基酸残基上。这些聚糖通常是分支结构，用于调节蛋白质的功能。聚糖是通过在哺乳动物系统中的高尔基器中发生的一系列酶促反应合成的。由于目前没有聚糖测序仪，因此使用质谱等技术来表征生物样品中的聚糖，以确定其聚糖组。这是一个繁琐的过程，需要高水平的专业知识和设备。因此，研究了作用于聚糖的酶，称为糖基因或糖基酶，以更好地了解聚糖的功能。随着糖相关数据库和糖库的发展，生物信息学方法试图预测蛋白质上的糖基化途径和糖基化位点。本章介绍了这些方法和相关的网络资源，以帮助理解聚糖的功能。
