*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
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)
