Latest Glycome Stories

As a step toward designing the first effective vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, scientists are reporting new insights into how a family of rare, highly potent antibodies bind to HIV and neutralize it — stop it from infecting human cells. The antibodies were isolated from people infected with HIV and work against a wide range of HIV strains. The researchers described the study today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's...

Sugar molecules coat every cell in our bodies and play critical roles in development and disease, yet the components of these "glycans" have been difficult for scientists to study, because of their complexity.Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have adapted gene chip microarray technology to the study of glycans, with an approach they call "shotgun glycomics." The Emory team has developed a new chemical method for attaching a fluorescent dye to glycans...

The glycome, encompassing all of the complex sugars produced by an organism, is comprised of multiple families of molecules whose function in the human body is often determined by the structure, composition, and placement of the attached sugars, as explored in a comprehensive look at the field of glycomics in a group of key articles in OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). The relevant articles are available...

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley, have successfully attached imaging probes to glycans "“ the sugar molecules that are abundant on the surfaces of living cells "“ in the embryos of zebrafish less than seven hours after fertilization. Glycans are key regulators of the processes that guide cell development, and zebrafish are a top vertebrate model organism of embryogenesis....