Glycome informatics: using systems biology to gain mechanistic insights into glycan biosynthesis

Glycobiology entails the study of glycans, or carbohydrate sugar chains. Much research has been made in understanding individual glycogenes such as glycosyltransferases, and glycan structures using glycomics technologies. However, to get an overall understanding of the importance of glycosylation, current technologies are lacking, and systems biology approaches have recently been incorporated to gain better insight into glycosylation mechanisms and their applicability to biological function. Many databases organizing glycobiology data have been developed, and a variety of methods for mathematically modeling glycosylation pathways have shown to be effective. While it is known that glycans modulate signaling pathways, however, the future is wide open for systems glycobiology research.