6^th International Conference on Glycobiology & Glycochemistry April 17-18, 2019 Chicago, Illinois, USA

Glycolipids are limited in fractions but known to be major and important contributors of glycoconjugates in all areas of life. The structural diversity of glycolipids is exceptional, as different types of lipids are glycosylated in almost every forms of life like animals, plants, and bacteria. Their role basically is to maintain stability of the membrane and to facilitate other cellular recognition. They act as glycan-carriers in the membranes of photosynthetic structures in, algae, plants and bacteria.

Glycopeptides are basically peptides that contain carbohydrate moieties generally glycan’s which are covalently attached to the side chains of the amino acid residues that constitute the peptide. These include a class of drugs of microbial origin that are composed of glycosylated cyclic or polycyclic non ribosomal peptides.

Glycoscience has become a vital, expanding and important extension of modern molecular biology and biomedicine in today’s era. The wider complexity of glycosylated and related structures is only paralleled to their utility. Discovering carbohydrate and glycan antigens as cancer biomarkers or even abnormal glycation pathways in metabolic disorders such as diabetes inhibited the importance of the expansion of glycoscience in a future, as a way of representing new biomarkers and therapeutic targets in disease. The final goal is to enhance research capabilities on glycosciences and provide ground to present and future emerging discoveries in glycosciences into new clinical applications and diagnostics.

Proteoglycans are more than 95% carbohydrate by weight. Proteoglycan helps to provide us with the idea to the molecule's various chemical compositions. As proteo refers to protein, while glycan represents sugar or a group of sugars, so proteoglycan is a long polysaccharide chain covalently attached to a protein. The protein component of proteoglycans is synthesized by ribosomes and mainly translocated into the lumen of the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Sialic acid is a generic term for the N- or O-substituted derivatives of neuraminic acid, a monosaccharide with a nine-carbon backbone and are found widely distributed in animal tissues and to a lesser extent in some other organisms, ranging from fungi,plants,yeasts and bacteria, mostly in glycoproteins and gangliosides.

Carbohydrates were very important in the early history of immunology in describing the identity of antigens which are recognized by antibodies. So the ability of these antibodies to uniquely recognize glycans and carbohydrate related molecules was exploited in studies defining the size of the antigen-binding site. Numerous carbohydrate-binding proteins, or lectins, have been identified on the surfaces of immune cells which intensify the importance of carbohydrates in both innate and adaptive immune responses in development of modern vaccines and immunological therapeutics. Recently glycobiologists and immunologists are now collaborating extensively to explore this crucial field in the area of immunobiology.

Glycoproteomics is emerging and booming as an important sub discipline of proteomics, focusing on the role of protein glycosylation in various biological processes. It focusses on branch of proteomics that identifies, summarizes, and characterizes proteins containing carbohydrates as a posttranslational modification by using Mass spectrometry which is commonly and widely used to identify the sugar moieties attached. Glycomics is the comprehensive study of glycomes the entire complement of sugars, whether free or present in more complex molecules of an organism including genetic, pathologic, physiologic, and other aspects. Glycomics "is the systematic study of all glycan structures of a given cell type or organism" and is a subset of glycobiology.

Carbohydrates are basically considered as major sources of structural materials and energy for living organisms. Recent modern research’s in this area has focused mainly on simple basic sugars and homopolysaccharides such as, starch, cellulose, glycogen, and chitin. During the last few decades, the researchers have shifted their focus on complex forms like carbohydrates, especially proteoglycans, glycolipids and glycoproteins which are collectively referred to as glycoconjugates  that shows the potential of recognition markers in the biological system which also relates to other biomedical and clinical fields.The roles of glycans and glycoconjgates in cancer have been emphasizes, because a small alterations in glycosylation can  tremendously regulate the whole pathway and mechanisms of cancer, which leads to an indication as a biomarker development leading to various therapeutics development in cancer research.

Carbohydrate rich molecules like including glycolipids, glycoproteins, and proteoglycans in the nervous system have important roles during development, regeneration and synaptic plasticity. The structural diversity of the carbohydrate moieties renders them ideally suited as stage-specific biomarkers for various cell types leading to mediate interactions between recognition molecules, thereby contributing to the formation of a complex molecular framework at the cell surface and in the extracellular matrix of the cell. The exceptional structural diversity of glycan chains and related moieties allows for immense advanced possibilities that can leads to cell interactions along with cell matrix interactions.

Glycomics parallel to proteomics and genomics is the systematic study of all the glycan structures of a given cell type or organism and is a subset of glycobiology. Sugars are generally linked to other types of biological molecule to form glycoconjugates. The various enzymatic process of glycosylation creates sugars or saccharides linked to themselves and to other molecules by the glycosidic bond, finally producing glycans. Proteoglycans, glycoproteins, and glycolipids are the most abundant glycoconjugates found in mammalian cells. Glycoconjugates have been shown to be important and play prominent role in cell-cell interactions due to the presence on the cell surface of various glycan binding receptors in addition to the glycoconjugates themselves.

Mass spectrometry (MS) is a vital analytical technique that ionizes chemical species and sorts the ions based on their mass-to-charge ratio. A mass spectrum is a plot of the ion signal as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio during experimental analysis. These spectra are then used to determine the elemental or isotopic signature of a sample for observations, the masses of particles and of various molecules, and to clarify the chemical structures of desired molecules, such as biomolecules, glycopeptides and other chemical compounds.

Recent technological advances in the field of glycobiology and glycochemistry are showing the way for a new era in carbohydrate related vaccine design. This is enabling a tremendous efficiency in the synthesis, identification, and evaluation of unique glycan epitopes found on a number of pathogens and cancerous cells. Glycans and related carbohydrate molecules are at the center of many disorders and diseases opening the possibility of exploiting them for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. There are various biochemical pathways and diseases in which carbohydrates are complexly involved.

Glyco-epitope diversity enhances the role of glycans and is now considered essential for life, both under normal and pathological conditions. The vital role of glycans in the research and development of diseases and the possible therapeutic use of this class of molecules by describing how the interaction of glycans with growth factors, extracellular proteases ,growth factor binding proteins, protease inhibitors, chemokines, morphogens, and adhesive proteins regulates inflammation, infection, atherosclerosis,  cancer, thrombosis and embryonic stem cell biology.

Generally glycans are vital components of many bio therapeutic agents, differing from natural products to molecules based on various rational designs to recombinant glycoproteins and glycoconjugates. The glycan components of these agents can be important determinants of their biological activity and therapeutic efficacy. Modern patenting of new therapeutics typically requires clarifications of the composition of matter in the claimed molecule for approval. Many remarkable advances can be seen in the areas of imaging, structure prediction technologies and advancement of hybrid methods to understand the structure and function of carbohydrates and proteins.