Glycomics: An Overview of the Complex Glycocode

Carbohydrates coat most cell types and are closely involved in various biological events. Their structures are complex to analyze owing to their branched nature, the diversity of secondary modifications of monomers, and their indirect relationship to the genome. Additionally, the range of cellular milieu in which glycan modifications are found is immense. Thus, despite genomics and proteomics being highly comprehensible and manageable to most scientists, technologies to assess glycan structures rapidly are still in their infancy. Recently, interest in profiling the glycome has increased due to the potential of glycans as disease markers. Incidentally, mass spectrometry is emerging as a powerful technique for profiling the glycome. This manuscript focuses on current progress in glycomics, including new mass spectrometry-based high-throughput techniques for glycan purification and annotation, the recent work on enhancing microarray methodologies to decipher the glycome, and the scope of glycans as disease markers.