earticle

영어

Cell-surface glycans are involved in both physiological and pathological processes through their interactions with proteins. Carbohydrate microarrays have become powerful tools for studies of these biomolecular interactions in a high-throughput manner. A major driving force for theexpanded use of glycan microarrays is the development of new experimental protocols in which they can be applied. A potentially important application of these microarrays is to assay glycosyltransferase activities. To date, only a few examples of enzymatic reactions taking place on the carbohydrate microarrays have been reported. Herein, we present the results of our recent studies which show that carbohydrate microarrays can be used for assaying galactosyltransferase activity. The approach requires only atiny amount of immobilized acceptor substrates (picomoles), and enzymatic catalytic activities are readily assessed by measuring the amount of a product formed in a time-dependent manner. The level of time-dependent product conversion is determined by using fluorescence detection of lectin recognition of carbohydrate products.