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Glycobiology Advance Access originally published online on January 19, 2007
Glycobiology 2007 17(5):23R-34R; doi:10.1093/glycob/cwm005
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© 2007 The Author(s)
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

Evolution of carbohydrate antigens—microbial forces shaping host glycomes?

Joseph R. Bishop2 and Pascal Gagneux1,2

2 Glycobiology Research and Training Center, Cellular and Molecular Medicine-East, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0687

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: pgagneux{at}ucsd.edu

Received on December 5, 2006; revised on January 10, 2007; accepted on January 10, 2007

Many glycans show remarkably discontinuous distribution across evolutionary lineages. These differences play major roles when organisms belonging to different lineages interact as host–pathogen or host–symbiont. Certain lineage-specific glycans have become important signals for multicellular host organisms, which use them as molecular signatures of their pathogens and symbionts through recognition by a toolkit of innate defense molecules. In turn, pathogens have evolved to exploit host lineage-specific glycans and are constantly shaping the glycomes of their hosts. These interactions take place in the face of numerous critical endogenous functions played by glycans within host organisms. Whether due to simple evolutionary divergence or adaptive changes under natural selection resulting from endogenous functional requirements, once different lineages elaborate on differential glycomes these mutual differences provide opportunities for host exploitation and/or pathogen defense between lineages. Such phylogenetic molecular recognition mechanisms will augment and likely contribute to the maintenance of lineage-specific differences in glycan repertoires.

Key words: glycan / co-evolution / host-pathogen / animal lectin


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