Time for Molecular Glycobiology

Abstract

Copyright: © 2012 Wu ZL. 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. Glycobiology, a field of research on glycans, is considered to be distinct from molecular biology, a field of research traditionally focused on protein and nucleic acids. The reason for this distinction is more due to methodological differences. The common practices for molecular biology including molecular cloning and detection methods are not available to glycobiology. However, with the recent technique advances, such as methods for glycosyltransferase assay, and availability of various new enzymatic tools, such as commercially active glycosyltransferases and sulfotransferases, research on glycobiology is going to be more similar to molecular biology and it is reasonable to say that glycobiology is going to enter into a new phase of molecular glycobiology.