Themed collection Chemical Glycobiology: innovative tools for the sweet side of biology

This review presents a high-level overview of marine glycans, highlighting their structural complexity, functional diversity, and emerging chemical methods for their analysis and synthesis.

Fluorinated carbohydrates are emerging scaffolds in glycobiology, enabling the elucidation of the roles of the individual hydroxyl groups of a carbohydrate in protein binding and drug discovery.

Synthetic mucins with tunable glycosylation were prepared by a combination of NCA polymerization and enzymatic sialylation and fucosylation and were used to probe glycan-dependent effects on peptide structure and degradation.

LysoRF-GBA is a dual-functional fluorescent substrate for quantifying β-glucocerebrosidase (GCase) activity within cells. Distinct fluorescence corresponding to substrate and cleaved product allows monitoring of both substrate uptake and turnover.

Site-specific glycan conjugation enables a stable and efficacious biparatopic HER2-targeting ADC.

Galectin-4 differs from other galectins in carbohydrate-binding specificity, cellular and pathophysiological function, and roles in e.g. cancer progression, fibrosis, and ulcerative colitis, making potent, selective inhibitors desired.

The structurally diverse lipid A from the marine bacterium Rheinheimera japonica KMM 9513^T displays weak TLR4 agonism but strong antagonism against pro-inflammatory E. coli LPS, serving as a basis for developing novel immunomodulatory analogues.

A workflow to enrich and detect anti-Neu5Gc antibodies from individual plasma specimens, using CMAH-transfected human cells as a source of Neu5Gc-containing glycans.

Peracetylated 4AzNeu5Ac is incorporated well into cell glycoconjugates. Deprotection via a thioglycoside facilitated chemoenzymatic synthesis of a C4-azido sialoside, which was studied for binding to Siglec-7 using native mass spectrometry.