Sweet tasting chips: microarray-based analysis of glycans

Glycosylation, a ubiquitous post-translational modification of proteins and lipids that generates enormous functional diversity, is rapidly gaining attention in the postgenomic era. The systematic study of glycans, that is glycomics, has been driven by the development of new analytical tools well suited to the inherent complexities of carbohydrate analysis, such as lectin-based microarray technologies. Recent work has demonstrated the utility of these analytical tools for glycomics in both clinical and research settings, for example identifying novel biomarkers associated with disease progression or studying HIV-1 exit mechanisms. This review highlights these new lectin-based microarray technologies and their role in the emerging field of glycomics.