Introduction of Research

Glycans cover the cell surface and mediate cell recognition and communication, including viral infection and cancer invasion and metastasis. Thus, as the “face” of the cell, glycans are involved in various biological phenomena and are also attracting attention in the medical and pharmaceutical sciences. However, it is difficult to predict the glycan structures or regulate their expression, as they are not directly encoded in the genome. Our aim is to comprehensively understand the biosynthetic system of glycans and to decipher the biological information they carry by making full use of approaches based on glycan structural analysis.