Researchers develop tool to detect low levels of sugars produced by living organisms

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an ultrasensitive method for detecting sugar molecules - or glycans - coming from living organisms, a breakthrough that will make possible a more detailed understanding of cellular functions than either genetic or proteomic (the study of proteins) information can provide. The researchers hope the new technique will revolutionise the study of glycans, which has been hampered by an inability to easily detect and identify minute quantities of these molecules.

''The glycome is richer in information than the genome or the proteome. A cancer cell, for example, might have the same genome as a non-cancer cell, but it produces different sugars,'' said Robert Linhardt, the Ann and John H. Broadbent Jr. '59 Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer, and an author of the study. ''Until now, the stumbling block in glycomics has been rapid and sensitive determination of the glycans present in a biological sample, and up to now we were very limited by how much we could detect. With this technique that we've developed, Glyco-qPCR, we can detect a very small number of molecules and that should accelerate the growth of the field.''

The new technique is discussed in a paper titled Signal Amplification by Glyco-qPCR for Ultrasensitive Detection of Carbohydrates: Applications in Glycobiology, which was published in the 16 October online edition of Angewandte Chemie International. Linhardt and Jonathan Dordick, director of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS), vice president for research, and the Howard P. Isermann '42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, were joined in the research by Seok Joon Kwon, Kyung Bok Lee, Kemal Solakyildirim, Sayaka Masuko, Mellisa Ly, Fuming Zhang, and Lingyn Li.

Linhardt used the analogy of a house to explain the importance of glycans in biology and the promise of glycomics in medicine and biotechnology  ---- if genes are the blueprints, and proteins are the structure, then sugars - glycans - are the decoration of all living matter.

Just as dozens of houses in a development - despite a shared blueprint and identical external appearance - can have a unique interior identity based on wall colors and furnishings, so can two cells share the same genome, and similar proteome, but function very differently from one another, Linhardt explained.

''You can look at a blueprint of a house and it can tell you something about the house, but it certainly can't tell you the colors of the walls,'' Linhardt said. ''We've developed a method to start to detect what the decorations will look like, and that will give us an insight into what the house will ultimately become.''