2. Academic Validation
  3. Labeling glycans on living cells by a chemoenzymatic glycoengineering approach

Labeling glycans on living cells by a chemoenzymatic glycoengineering approach

  • Biol Open. 2017 Jun 15;6(6):923-927. doi: 10.1242/bio.021600.
Ruben T Almaraz 1,  Yanhong Li 2
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA [email protected].
  • 2 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
PMID: 28500031 DOI: 10.1242/bio.021600
Abstract

Structural glycobiology has traditionally been a challenging field due to a limited set of tools available to investigate the diverse and complex glycan molecules. However, we cannot ignore that glycans play critical roles in health as well as in disease, and are present in more than 50% of all proteins and on over 80% of all surface proteins. Chemoenzymatic glycoengineering (CGE) methods are a powerful set of tools to synthesize complex glycans, but the full potential of these methods have not been explored in Cell Biology yet. Herein, we report the labeling of live Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells by employing three highly specific glycosyltransferases: a Sialyltransferase, a galactosyltransferase, and an N-acetyl-glucosaminyl transferase. We verified our results by bio-orthogonal blots and further rationalized them by computational modeling. We expect CGE applications in Cell Biology to rise and their implementation will assist in structural-functional discoveries in glycobiology. This research will contribute to this effort.

Keywords

Chemoenzymatic; Glycobiology; Glycoengineering; Glycosyltransferases.

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