Biological and chemical diversity from the oceans

Research & Development

Glycobiology

Glycobiology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of structure, biosynthesis, and function of saccharides (sugar chains), which may exist purely or conjugated to other biological molecules to form glycoconjugates. The study of such molecules is technically challenging as no sequencing tool, such as that used in proteomics or genomics, is available.

However, following on from genomics and proteomics, there is increasing recognition of the importance of carbohydrate-based molecules in basic cellular processes. This has resulted in more extensive glycomic studies in the areas of glycosylation of therapeutic proteins, glycosylation patterns in cell recognition, cellular glycoprofiling studies in cancer and other diseases, correlation between activity and sulphation patterns in glycosaminoglycans, and the improved chemical analysis and synthesis of carbohydrate molecules.

Glycobiology offers enormous untapped potential in the discovery of new therapeutics derived from saccharides or other molecules which target the biosynthesis and function of saccharides.

Saccharides: multifunctional biological molecules

Saccharides offer potential chemical diversity orders of magnitude greater than their protein and nucleic acid counterparts1.

For example, DNA can give 256 4-unit structures; amino acids can give 16000 4-unit structures, whereas the nine common monosaccharides have the theoretical ability to generate nearly 16 M 4-unit structures[2]. The level of chemical information encoded in saccharides is therefore unrivalled.

Saccharides have multiple functions which makes them relevant to almost any area of biological research. They are ubiquitously present on cell surfaces, mediating the interaction of cells with other cells, with the extracellular matrix and with effector molecules. The glycosylation of protein molecules is also critical for their function, bioavailability and half-life. Polysaccharides and glycoconjugates also play a major structural role in all connective tissues. Oligosaccharides, which are short chains of sugars derived from larger polysaccharides or synthesised in their own right, are widely studied to identify functional groups within complex glycoconjugates or polysaccharides.

Marine glycobiology offers the exciting opportunity of an enormous diversity of novel compounds, which differ significantly from mammalian glycobiology. Marine carbohydrates form the basis of the long established alginate (from sea weed) industry, and more recently of a number of nutraceutical products (from sea weed, microalgae, and shrimp waste). This demonstrates the feasibility of a long-term business based on marine glycobiology, and highlights the opportunity to establish a new business exploiting the pharmaceutical properties of marine glycobiology products. GlycoMar specialises in the development of marine glycobiology as a source of novel biopharmaceuticals.

  1. Turnbull, J.E. and R.A. Field, Emerging glycomics technologies. Nat Chem Biol, 2007. 3(2): p. 74
  2. Maeder, T., Sweet medicines - Sugars play critical roles in many cellular functions and in disease. Study of those activities lags behind research into genes and proteins but is beginning to heat up. The discoveries promise to yield a new generation of drug therapies. Scientific American, 2002. 287(1): p. 40-47

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