Journal of Biochemistry Research

Drug Discovery And Glycomics

 Scientific tools have led to a renaissance inour understanding of the physical world. DNAmicroarrays, nucleotide sequencing, au-tomated  DNA  synthesis,  polymerasechain reaction (PCR), recombinant DNAtechniques, NMR and computationalmethods [8,9] all have an important place inthe tool kit of modern scientists. These toolshave facilitated discoveries in fields as diverseas medicine, structural biology, nanotechnol-ogy and physics. By contrast, they have beenapplied only recently to the study of carbohy-drates, and this delay has greatly hindered theemerging field of glycomics. Carbohydrates are known to have essentialroles in diverse biological processes includinghost–pathogen interactions, signal trans-duction , inflammation and develop-ment. Carbohydrates with medicinal usesinclude  heparan,  which  is  the  most  widelyused anticoagulant, antibiotics andvaccines. Uncovering the contributionsof carbohydrates to cell biology would greatlyfacilitate advancements in science and medi-cine; however, such discoveries are hinderedby the large investments that must be madeto procure carbohydrates of sufficient purityand  quantity  for  biological  testing.  obtaining carbohydrates; for example, carbo-hydrate synthesis is not template-driven andthe isolation of carbohydrates from naturalsources, although possible, yields only limitedquantities  of  material  that  is  often  micro-heterogeneous. Chemical synthesis and cellbiology can aid in procuring defined chemi-cal  materials,  but  non-specialists  do  notuse these experimental routes routinely andmolecular biology techniques can be used totransfer glycosylation pathways to bacteria toenable  the  genetic  manipulation  of  glycanstructures.  

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