Revisiting the Language of Glycoscience: Readers, Writers and Erasers in Carbohydrate Biochemistry

Abstract

The perceptiont hat glycoscience-the chemistry and biology of carbohydrates-is both complex and ubiquitous in nature [1,2] hasl ed to the notion that "carbohydrates in molecular biology are like dark matter in the universe…p oorly studied yet crucial to af ull understanding of how things actually work". [3] In contrastt on ucleic acids and proteins (DNA codes for RNA codes for protein), the lack of template-encoding disconnects the "glyco code" [4] from direct gene sequence control. This results in carbohydrate biosynthesis and the biological function of glycansb eing dependent upon as eries of protein-carbohydrate interaction events. Overall,t he concerted actions of lectins, glycosyltransferases and/or glycoside hydrolases achieve the integrity of matureb ioactive glycan structures. Thei ntricacies of this landscape are made worse by the tendency of the glycoscience community to emphasise the complexitieso ft he field, perhaps making it less accessible to the casual reader-the informed non-expert-than it needs to be. The glycoscience community are not alone in this shortcoming, as highlighted by aC omment in Nature that suggests that "Antibiotic resistance has al anguage problem. Af ailure to use words clearly underminest he global response to antimicrobials' waning usefulness". [5] Te chnological [6] and informatics [7] advancesi ng lycoscience, alongside combinations of the two, [8] are providing new ways to cut through the complexity,w hilst [a] Dr.The ORCID identification numbers for the authors of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.201900377.The roles of carbohydrates in nature are many and varied. However,the lack of templatee ncoding in glycoscience distances carbohydrate structure, and hence function, from gene sequence. This challenging situation is compounded by descrip-tors of carbohydrate structure and functiont hat have tended to emphasise their complexity.Herein, we suggest that revising the languageo fg lycoscience could make interdisciplinary discourse more accessible to all interestedp arties.

LectinOracle: A Generalizable Deep Learning Model for Lectin–Glycan Binding Prediction

“…If glycosyltransferases and related enzymes could be construed as the “writers” in glycobiology, lectins would represent the “readers” of the glycocode. [ 66 ] Because glycans dominate the surface area of most cells, protein‐mediated interactions between cells or organisms typically rely on lectins that recognize specific glycan motifs. Yet lectins typically do not follow a strict one protein—one motif correspondence such as zinc finger proteins in DNA recognition.…”

The Flexibility of Oligosaccharides Unveiled Through Residual Dipolar Coupling Analysis

“…The full understanding of the conformation, dynamics and interactions of carbohydrates remains a challenging task ( Yu and Delbianco, 2020 ; Dedola et al, 2020 ), despite the enormous advances in several experimental techniques and theoretical methods. NMR has been extensively employed to assess the conformational, dynamic and recognition features of these flexible molecules.…”

Recent Developments in the Use of Glyconanoparticles and Related Quantum Dots for the Detection of Lectins, Viruses, Bacteria and Cancer Cells

“…The tuneable optical properties of gold NPs (AuNPs) and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) make them ideal candidates for use in simple colorimetric assays ( Schofield et al, 2006 ; Marín et al, 2015 ). Given the pervasive nature of carbohydrates in biology ( Dedola et al, 2020 ), and aberrant expression of carbohydrates and carbohydrate-binding receptors on the surface of some cancer cells, glyconanoparticles have also been extensively studied to target, image and treat tumours ( Hockl et al, 2016 ; Torres-Pérez et al, 2020 ). Herein, we survey recent advances in these fields: key features of the systems discussed can be found in Figure 1 and Table 1 .…”