Glycochemistry
GLYCO CHEMISTRY
Glycochemistry is the chemistry of sugars: understanding, making, and modifying the complex sugar structures known as glycans. An application relevant to BioBeyond_NL is creating synthetic glycans with precisely defined structures to serve as reference standards. These standards help researchers map the cell-surface glycome – the complete collection of glycans on a cell’s surface. Knowing a glycan’s composition tells us which sugar building blocks it contains, but not exactly how they are connected and arranged. Comparing biological samples with synthetic standards helps resolve this ambiguity and establish their structures. This matters because the precise structure of a glycan shapes its biological function. Glycochemistry therefore helps connect the molecular makeup of a cell’s surface to how that cell interacts with its surroundings.
ACCESS TO GLYCO UTRECHT UNIVERSITY
Our group in Utrecht specializes in developing chemical tools to study how glycans, proteins, and RNAs interact at the cell surface. We are developing platforms that combine proximity labeling and selective crosslinking with mass spectrometry–based proteomics to map these interactions across biological systems. Chemical biology tools will be made available, including (photo)chemical crosslinkers, proximity labeling reagents, to study biomolecular interactions, with a focus on protein-glycan, protein-protein, protein-RNA, and protein-drug interactions.
For potential users, these tools will help identify proteins associated with a particular glycan or RNA and investigate how these associations change between conditions, such as healthy and diseased cells. Our distinctive contribution is the chemistry that makes these interactions measurable, bringing glycans and RNAs into proteomic workflows to understand how these different classes of molecules function together. Empowered by the state-of-the-art mass spectrometers, the tools will enable studying these interactions not only proteome-wide, but also in a spatially resolved manner.