Glycan Arrays: Construction, Detection, and Analysis

Glycans are a structurally and functionally diverse group of biomolecules. They play important roles in many biological processes by binding to and being processed by glycan binding proteins (GBPs). Glycan complexity and structural diversity can make carbohydrates difficult to study. Developing tools to study the interactions between glycans and GBPs is critical both to advance basic research and to expand biomedical applications. Over the past two decades, glycan microarrays have emerged as powerful tools for profiling the interactions of GBPs with a variety of carbohydrate motifs for many applications. Glycan microarrays allow for the use of small of amounts of carbohydrates and the high-throughput profiling of multiple structures at once. Many developments have been made to the construction, detection, and analysis of glycan microarrays. Glycan array construction uses a variety of approaches and surfaces for attachment of glycan-containing compounds. Qualitative and quantitative detection and analysis methods have been developed to include labeled detection such as fluorescence or label-free detection. This chapter reviews the glycan microarray from construction to analysis and the many considerations for choosing a strategy.