Glycans housed by a bacteriophage enable rapid identification of glycan recognition patterns.

Glycans are a major composition of the cell surface that interacts with the surrounding environment. The ability to carry out glycan-binding profile studies has been mainly done with glycan arrays. However, glycan arrays are not easily adaptable for cell surface and in vivo glycan recognition assays. The Liquid Glycan Array (LiGA) reported recently by Sojitra et al. is an alternative glycan recognition assay that employs DNA barcoding, bioorthogonal ligation and deep sequencing technology. In LiGA, barcoded M13 virions are used to present glycans to allow rapid identification of binding partners based on sequence identity. This physical link between the glycan to the DNA sequence fitted in the phage genome provides an ingenious approach to maneuver glycan binding profile studies in various conditions.