Click Chemistry in Glycoscience

Abstract

Metabolic oligosaccharide engineering combined with bio-orthogonal chemistry is proving unique opportunities to detect, image, and isolate glycoconjugates of living cells, tissues, and model organisms. In this approach, exogenously supplied non-natural sugars are fed to cells and employed by the biosynthetic machinery for the biosynthesis of neoglycoconjugates. In this way, reactive functional groups such as ketones, azides, and thiols can be incorporated into sialic acid, galactosamine, glucosamine, and fucose moieties of glycoconjugates. A range of bio-orthogonal reactions has been developed to functionalize the chemical "tags" for imaging, isolation, and drug delivery. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.