Glycan Microarrays with Semi-synthetic Neoglycoconjugate Probes in Understanding Glycobiology

The study of glycan recognition by glycan-binding proteins has emerged as a challenging area of research at the interface of chemistry and biology. The advances in glycomic approaches, including the development and successful application of glycan microarrays, have played a crucial role in the understanding of glycan functions. A variety of methods were developed for construction of arrays using different strategies to overcome the limitation of direct immobilization of glycans onto solid matrices. The neoglycoconjugates were developed in the 1990s to address the multivalency issue of glycan–protein interactions and have been used as probes for non-covalent and covalent immobilization. In this chapter, the principles and applications of microarrays using neoglycolipids and neoglycoproteins as probes are described.