Historical Overview of Integrated GAG-omics and Proteomics

The ECM is a complex molecular network that surrounds all cells and consists of proteins, glycoproteins, hyaluronan, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and proteoglycans (PGs). GAGs and PGs play vital roles in ECM-related processes such as cell migration, proliferation, adhesion, and differentiation. Among the omics technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, glycomics is the least mature. Over the past two decades, with efforts from glycoscientists around world, and the advent of new glyco-techonologies, databases, tools, and methods, much progress has been made. Now, the focus is to integrate proteomics and glycomics domains in a new platform to analyze and characterize biomolecule classes and define their structural and functional roles. Towards this end, we have developed approaches that integrate analysis of GAGs and proteins towards an end goal of elucidating pathophysiological mechanisms to inform development of disease therapies and regenerative medicine. In this chapter, we provide a historical overview of our groups’ methods for glycomics, glycoproteomics, and proteomics of key ECM constituents, i.e., GAGs and PGs, as reported over the past decade.