Our Resource has compiled from several sources a list of glycogenes involved in the biosynthesis of glycans that are found on human and mouse glycoproteins and glycolipids.
Investigators
Kelley Morement, Senior Investigator
Alison Nairn, Senior Investigator
Melina Galizzi Research Professional
Overview
The overall objective for this project is focused on developing technologies to probe the regulation of glycan structures by examining transcript abundance of the enzymatic machinery involved in the synthesis, modification, and degradation of glycans in animal systems and correlating these changes with alterations in glycan structural abundance. Cell surface carbohydrates play significant roles in cell-cell and cell-substratum adhesion, cell migration, cellular uptake of glycosylated products, and numerous other critical functions. Despite decades of studies on the analysis of glycan structures and the enzymology of glycan biosynthetic and degradative enzymes, very little is known about the global regulation of glycan synthesis and degradation.
The goals of this Resource have been to create strategies for glycan analysis and transcript quantitation using ES cell differentiation as a model biological system. We developed technologies for transcript profiling, first using a qRT-PCR transcriptome analysis platform and more recently by a parallel application of RNA-Seq approaches. The technologies were used to study gene regulation in pluripotent and differentiated ES cell populations and collaborative studies in other organism systems for correlation with glycan structural analyses. Strategies were also developed to correlate the two related but disparate data sets to reveal where gene expression and corresponding glycan structures predict transcriptional or post-transcriptional control of glycan diversity.
