Glycomics

The emerging field of glycomics focuses on the structure and function of glycans in a cell, tissue, organism, or other living system.  Glycans are chained carbohydrates (oligo or polysaccharides) that are free or conjugated to macromolecules, such as proteins (referred to as glycoproteins) or lipids (referred to as glycolipids).  They participate in a diverse array of biological processes (e.g., cell signalling, protein folding, and immune recognition) and are implicated in a number of diseases (e.g., oncological, autoimmune, and Alzheimer’s).  While analytical methodologies for their detection and sequencing have advanced, glycomic research has been hampered by the lack of commercially available standards and research tools.

Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Inc. (CIL) is pleased to offer standards/tools to the glycomic research community to aid the detection, identification, and quantification of glycans in biological samples.  Specifically, CIL is now supplying authentic glycan standards for use as internal standards for mass spectrometry and as starting materials for use in glyco-microarrays.  Additionally, CIL is pleased to offer an innovative glycan-tagging kit termed INLIGHT^® (Individuality Normalization when Labelling with Isotopic Glycan Hydrazide Tag) for use in relative quantitative comparisons of N-glycans between two samples.

The glycan standards available are in their ¹³C₆-labelled and unlabelled form. These encompass a broad range of categories (e.g., N-linked, O-linked, and fucosylated) and have been highly characterized using a number of analytical techniques (e.g., 1H NMR and ESI-MS). The standards are supplied as purified powders in 500 pmol quantities (alternate quantities available upon request) and can be used for a variety of applications (e.g., health and disease assessment).

INLIGHT® was developed by David Muddiman and colleagues at North Carolina State University. This kit is designed for the relative quantification of enzymatically cleaved N-glycans in binary samples (i.e., case and control) by MS.

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