Super-resolution imaging in glycoscience: New developments and challenges

Abstract

Carbohydrates on cell surfaces play a crucial role in a wide variety of biological processes, including cell adhesion, recognition and signaling, viral and bacterial infection, in°ammation and metastasis. However, owing to the large diversity and complexity of carbohydrate structure and nongenetically synthesis, glycoscience is the least understood¯eld compared with genomics and proteomics. Although the structures and functions of carbohydrates have been investigated by various conventional analysis methods, the distribution and role of carbohydrates in cell membranes remain elusive. This review focuses on the developments and challenges of super-resolution imaging in glycoscience through introduction of imaging principle and the available°uorescent probes for super-resolution imaging, the labeling strategies of carbohydrates, and the recent applications of super-resolution imaging in glycoscience, which will promote the super-resolution imaging technology as a promising tool to provide new insights into the study of glycoscience.

Updates on Aptamer Research

“…Thus it was concluded that compared to the natural receptor ligand transferrin and specific monoclonal antibodies, aptamer staining is ideal in super-resolution microscopy [130]. It is worth noting that similar observations were reported when aptamers were compared to antibodies targeting different epitopes including prostate-specific membrane antigen and EGFR [18,129,136,164].…”

“…Although, Tuerk’s experiments pioneered the SELEX process, the process was not named SELEX until Szostak and Ellington developed the same method and coined the term SELEX [15]. The term refers to a process that entails progressive separation of single-stranded DNAs or RNAs (ssDNA/RNA) combinatorial single-stranded oligonucleotide library via repeated rounds of binding, partitioning, and amplification [16,17,18]. It is noted that following the development of this novel technology, different modified SELEX techniques have emerged over the past three decades.…”

“…Some of these developments tackled the ssDNA/RNA library improvement, while many others addressed the development of the SELEX process. In the contemporary research environment, cell-SELEX (illustrated in Figure 1) has been extensively used to identify and select aptamers that can help in the diagnosis as well as the development of treatments for different diseases, particularly for cancer [18,19,20]. Thus, cell-SELEX technology has become increasingly important in medical research.…”