Dr. Wen Yi, California Institute of Technology

Chemical biology of carbohydrates: from bacterial pathogenesis to human cancer

Although carbohydrates are known to participate in many important biological processes, including pathogenic invasion, inflammation, and disease development/progression, their functional roles are only beginning to be understood on a molecular level. A major obstacle to this understanding is the inherent difficulty in studying carbohydrates and glycoproteins. Unlike nucleic
acids and proteins, carbohydrates are not synthesized from a template whose code can be deciphered and genetically manipulated. In addition, certain important sugar modifications are chemically and enzymatically labile, substoichiometric, and are typically found on low-abundance regulatory proteins. As such, traditional biological approaches have not been sufficient to provide a complete understanding of the structure and function of carbohydrates in biological systems. In this talk, I will discuss chemical tools as a complementary and powerful approach to understanding the roles and mechanisms of carbohydrates in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. This includes the elucidation of polysaccharide biosynthesis in bacteria, bioengineering of novel polysaccharide structures, as well as investigating the impact of O-linked protein glycosylation on cancer cell metabolism and growth.

For more information contact Prof. Loren Williams (404-894-9752)