New sugar protein tool - for real

Scientists have devised a new way to make sugar-linked proteins, an important step towards understanding a key type of protein modification and refining drug therapies that utilize the so-called glycoproteins -- as well as the subject of two high-profile papers that were recently retracted.

Image: Wikimedia commons, S. Jähnichen

"It's a pretty important thing that they've done," said synthetic biologist linkurl:Jason Chin;http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/a-to-g/j-chin of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Plus, after the previous controversy-ridden setback, the new findings might well be a welcome step forward for the field. "Any method where you install that first sugar [onto a protein] would be a big advance," Chin said. The study, linkurl:published online today (February 28) in Nature Chemical Biology,;http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchembio.314.html describes the addition of sugars to proteins, a process known as glycosylation. Glycosylation is one of the most common posttranslational modifications in eukaryotes, known to affect protein...