Labeling and Visualizing Glycans with Specificity and Versatility

Xing Chen

Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P.R. China(email:)

Glycosylation plays a key role in mediating molecular recognition, development, and cell signaling. Our research group works on developing chemical tools to label, visualize, and modulate glycosylation. Here, we present the development of a liposome-based strategy for cell-selective metabolic labeling of glycans and a FRET-based method for protein-specific imaging of cell-surface glycans1,2. Furthermore, we design and synthesize bifunctional unnatural sugars that introduce simultaneously two functional groups into cellular glycans3. The bifunctional sugar analogs are valuable tools for profiling glycan-protein interactions. Finally, we are interested in developing new imaging modalities for glycan visualization. A recently developed bioorthogoal Raman imaging technique will be discussed4,5.

References:

1.Xie, R., Hong, S., Feng, L., Rong, J. & Chen, X. Cell-selective metabolic glycan labeling based on ligand-targeted liposomes. J. Am. Chem. Soc.134, 9914–9917 (2012).

2.Lin, W., Du, Y., Zhu, Y. & Chen, X. A Cis-Membrane FRET-Based Method for Protein-Specific Imaging of Cell-Surface Glycans. J. Am. Chem. Soc.136, 679–687 (2014).

3.Feng, L. et al. Bifunctional unnatural sialic acids for dual metabolic labeling of cell-surface sialylated glycans. J. Am. Chem. Soc.135, 9244–9247 (2013).

4.Lin, L. et al. A Bioorthogonal Raman Reporter Strategy for SERS Detection of Glycans on Live Cells. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.52, 7266–7271 (2013).

5.Hong, S. et al. Live-Cell Stimulated Raman Scattering Imaging of Alkyne-Tagged Biomolecules. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. doi:10.1002/anie.201400328 (2014).

Biography

Dr. Xing Chen was born in October 1980. He completed his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Tsinghua University in 2002. Dr. Chen then obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of California, Berkeley in 2007, where his research focused on chemical biology and bionanotechnology. After completing postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School in the field of structural biology and immunology, he joined the Peking University faculty in September, 2010. Some of his awards include: Chinese Chemical Society Young Chemist Award (2013);DuPont Young Professor Award (2013); SCOPUS Young Researcher Award (2012); The current research interest of Dr. Chen is focused on chemical glycobiology.