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Science Glycomics [Listen Now] The study of sugars within organisms is becoming one of the most talked about field in the bio-sciences. Biochemists are finding that these sugars are as vital as proteins in making each cell work. These sugars modify proteins and lipids which fine tunes these molecules. These glycans, glycoproteins and glycolipids, are major components of the outer surface of mammalian cells. It is becoming more clear that glycans are fundamental to many biological processes including fertilization, immune defense, viral replication, parasitic infection, cell growth, cell-to-cell adhesion and inflammation. It is not surprising therefore that errors in sugar modification of proteins and lipids have severe implications and are associated with common diseases such as cancer and diabetes. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has identified glycomics as one of the key fields that will shape the future of Molecular and Cellular Biology in this millennium and has decided to fund a Consortium for Functional Glycomics. Glycobiology Journal Science Magazine, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), devoted its 23 March 2001, Volume 291, Issue 5512 to carbohydrates and glycobiology. Recognizing the importance of sugars in health and disease, increasing numbers of researchers in academia and the biotechnology industry have recently stepped up efforts to learn the details of their structures and activities and to translate those findings into new therapeutic agents. Read Physicians were also slow to realize the importance of sugars to human health. They now know that a variety of birth defects, potentially fatal syndromes, and other illnesses stem from problems with sugars. Read You may think of sugars as simple substances you use to sweeten your coffee. But simple sugars can be built into giant molecules called complex sugars that rival DNA and proteins in size and complexity. Until recently, biologists thought that living things used them either mainly for storing energy, as a structural material (in the form of cellulose, for example) or perhaps as mere decorations on the surfaces of cells. But now it has become clear that these molecules are far more than just the icing on the cake. Read Journal Acta Anatomica Features Glycosciences The prestigious International Journal of Anatomy, Embryology and Cell Biology devoted an entire issue of their publication Acta Anatomica Vol.161, No. 1-4, 1998 publication to the topic of the glycosciences. The editor's note referred to the impressive progress made in recent years in glycoconjugate research alluding to the fact that it has left footprints in virtually all fields of biology and medicine, not only in immunology, but also in general cell biology, developmental and reproductive biology and neurobiology. He continued by commenting many of "the secrets of glycosciences are only accessible to a closed circle of aficionados" who appear to be the only ones to understand the 'meaningful words of a sweet language of life'. The back cover of this publication states that the last decade has witnessed the rapid emergence of the concept of the sugar code of biological information... Indeed, monosaccharides represent an alphabet of biological information similar to amino acids and nucleic acids, but with unsurpassed coding capacity. Acta Anatomica is published by Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers.
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Copyright © 2009 Pat Lee. All rights reserved.
