To the lay public, sugars are the villains behind expanding waistlines and rotting teeth, and until recently, the view from the lab bench was not much different. Sugars were considered so irrelevant, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Ram Sasisekharan, that biochemists "mainly developed tools to remove them from proteins they were studying."
Today, however, the mood is decidedly different. Sugars, or more properly, the complex sugars called glycans, are now recognized as critical mediators of cell-cell communication, playing roles in cancer, infection, immunity, and even the interactions between egg and sperm. Studies of knockout mice for glycan-related proteins suggest a prominent role in development, and a number of human glycan-related genetic disorders have been identified.12
On the technology front, improved analytical techniques are helping researchers see the depth and breadth of biologically relevant carbohydrates, while enhanced synthesis methods ease the development of tools to screen proteins for their sugar-binding ...
