2015th Edition
by Naoyuki Taniguchi (Editor), Tamao Endo (Editor), Gerald W. Hart (Editor), Peter H. Seeberger (Editor), Chi-Huey Wong (Editor)
The aim of the book is to provide a
succinct overview of the current status of glycoscience from both basic
biological and medical points of view and to propose future directions,
in order to facilitate further integrations of glycoscience with other
fields in biological and medical studies.
Glycans (carbohydrate
oligomers) are the so-called “building blocks” of carbohydrates, nucleic
acids, proteins and lipids and play major roles in many biological
phenomena as well as in various pathophysiological processes. However,
this area of glycoscience has been neglected from the research community
because glycan structures are very complex and functionally diverse and
as compared to proteins and nucleic acids simple tools for the
amplification, sequencing and auto-synthesis of glycans are not
available. Many scientists in other fields of research have now realized
that glycosylation, i.e. the addition of glycans to a protein backbone,
is the most abundant post translational modification reactions and is
an important field of research and sometimes they require a glycobiology
and/or glycochemistry approach to be used. It is still difficult,
however, for non-expert researchers to use these techniques. This book
provides numerous but simple overviews of current topics and protocols
for the experiments. The book is aimed at university students and above,
including non-experts in the field of glycoscience.
