Frequent glycan structure mining of influenza virus data revealed a sulfated glycan motif that increased viral infection

Abstract

Motivation: It is well known influenza viruses recognize and bind terminal sialic acid (SA) on glycans that are found on the cell surface. In this work, we used a data mining technique to analyze the glycan array data of influenza viruses to find novel glycan structures other than SA that may be involved in viral infection.Results: In addition to SA structures noted previously, we noted the sulfated structures in the mining results. For verification, we overexpressed the sulfotransferase that is involved in synthesizing these structures, and we performed a viral infection experiment to assess changes in infection in these cells. In our results, we found that there is a 70-fold increase in these cells compared with the control. Thus, we have found a novel pattern in glycan structures that may be involved in viral infection. © 2013 The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.