Editorial
The Meaning of Glycan Synthesis
Masanori Yamaguchi*
Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Education, Wakayama University, 930, Sakaedani, Wakayama 640- 8510, Japan
- *Corresponding Author:
- Masanori Yamaguchi
Department of Organic Chemistry
Faculty of Education, Wakayama University
930, Sakaedani, Wakayama 640- 8510, Japan
Tel: 81-73-457-7323
Fax: 81-73-457-7472
E-mail: [email protected]
Received date: September 26, 2012; Accepted date: September 27, 2012; Published date: September 28, 2012
Citation: Yamaguchi M (2012) The Meaning of Glycan Synthesis. J Glycomics Lipidomics 2:e111. doi: 10.4172/2153-0637.1000e111
Copyright: © 2012 Yamaguchi M. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Carbohydrates play important roles in numerous physiological processes. For example, cell migration, recognition, morphogenesis, cancer cell metastasis, and so on. To clarify these phenomena in detail, constant amount of carbohydrates are necessary.
Recent advances in gene engineering have now made it possible to mass-produce extremely useful proteins, but the technology involved is not ideal for the creation of glycoproteins. This is because DNA incorporated by gene recombination, has no direct information about biosynthesis of the carbohydrate chains. Therefore, it is important to create carbohydrate chains artificially.