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Glycobiology Advance Access originally published online on June 15, 2009
Glycobiology 2009 19(11):1155-1162; doi:10.1093/glycob/cwp076
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© 2009 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses?by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Review

Structural insights into what glycan arrays tell us about how glycan-binding proteins interact with their ligands

Maureen E Taylor and Kurt Drickamer1

Division of Molecular Biosciences, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed: Tel: +44-20-7594-5282; Fax: +44-20-7594-3057; e-mail: k.drickamer{at}imperial.ac.uk

Received on April 19, 2009; revised on May 25, 2009; accepted on May 25, 2009

Screening of glycan arrays represents a powerful, high-throughput approach to defining oligosaccharide ligands for glycan-binding receptors, commonly referred to as lectins. Correlating results from such arrays with structural analysis of receptor–ligand complexes provide one way to validate the arrays. Using examples drawn from the family of proteins that contain C-type carbohydrate-recognition domains, this review illustrates how information from the arrays reflects the way that selectivity and affinity for glycan ligands is achieved. A range of binding profiles is observed, from very restricted binding to a small set of structurally similar ligands to binding of broad classes of ligands with related terminal sugars and even to failure to bind any of the glycans on an array. These outcomes provide insights into the importance of multiple factors in defining the selectivity of these receptors, including the presence of conformationally defined units in some oligosaccharide ligands, local and extended interactions between glycans and the surfaces of receptors, and steric factors that exclude binding of some ligands.

Key words: glycan array / glycan-binding receptor / lectin / modeling / structure


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