Glycoconjugates in Glycobiology, Glycochemistry and Glycoengineering

Dear Colleagues,

Glycoconjugates, mainly including proteoglycans, glycoproteins, glycolipids and lipopolysaccharides, represent a large category of biological polymers that feature a diverse range of sugar chains as information-carrying molecules. Owing to their special physicochemical properties, some types of glycoconjugates compose cell membranes, extracellular matrices and body fluids in animals, while other types are highly prevalent in plants or microorganisms. More importantly, the polysaccharide or oligosaccharide chains of these complicated biomolecules play pivotal roles in cell–cell adhesion, cell–extracellular matrix adhesion, pathogen infection, lymphocyte homing, plasma protein clearance, etc. These vital biological processes are mediated by various lectins, which can read the glycan-carried bioinformation by binding, with high specificity, to certain three-dimensional faces of glycoconjugate sugar chains. Glycoscience, concerning glycoconjugates and their bioactive glycans, is predicted to have great application potential in a wide range of fields, such as biomedical research, medical tests, infection prevention and therapy, drug discovery, medical materials, functional food ingredient exploitation, food detection, industrial development of new processing technology and products, etc. The ultimate realization of this potential depends on continuous in-depth studies on the highly complicated and diverse stereochemical structure, the high-efficiency chemoenzymatic synthesis, the accurate structure–activity relationships and the large-scale industrial production technology of various glycoconjugates and their glycans.

This Special Issue is focused on novel research of glycoconjugates and their glycans considering subjects such as separation and characterization, structural analysis, quantification, chemoenzymatic synthesis and modification, structure–property relationships, glycan microarray and lectin microarray assays, chemical biology, large-scale production technologies, processing and utilization technologies, industrial applications, etc. Original research articles and comprehensive review papers are anticipated to provide readers with the latest research information in the fields of glycobiology, glycochemistry and glycoengineering.

Dr. Chengjian Wang
Prof. Dr. Zhongfu Wang
Prof. Dr. Linjuan Huang
Guest Editors

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• glycoconjugates
• bioactive sugar chains
• structural analysis
• chemoenzymatic synthesis
• microarray assays
• structure–activity relationships
• industrial applications