C O N T E N T SDefinitionDefined in the broadest sense, Glycobiology is the study of the structure, biosynthesis and biology of glycans that are widely distributed in nature. During the initial phase of the modern revolution in molecular biology in the 1970s and 80s, studies of glycans lagged behind those of the other major classes of molecules. This was in large part due to the inherent structural complexity of glycans, the difficulty in easily determining their sequence, and the lack of in-depth information about the genetic control of their biosynthesis. The development of a variety of new technologies for exploring the structures of these chains and the cloning of most of the major genes involved in synthesizing them has now opened up a new frontier of molecular and cellular biology called "Glycobiology" ( a term "coined in 1988 by Rademacher, Parekh, and Dwek) . Since that time a very broad spectrum of functions have been revealed for glycans. Thus, Glycobiology is also an integrative science, crossing all subfields of chemistry, biology and medicine, in relation to all aspects of the structure, biosynthesis and function of glycans. [1] Links |
