Glycomics in Biotechnology

Glycomics in Biotechnology
Name:
Institution:
Date:
How the technology works.
Glycomics is a new concept proposed during the 20 century following proteomics and genomics. It is the study of glycomes, which includes studying all the glycan structures of a cell type or any organism (Google, 2013). Glycans as antigens are often dominant. Substituents of the anomeric generate an electrophilic intermediate by acting as the leaving group. When a hydroxyl group that is a nucleophile reacts with this species, it leads to the glycosidic linkage formation. In this process oligosaccharide are formed amongst a multitude of functional groups ( hydroxyl and amino) with similar reactivity to allow access to branched structures. The conjugate vaccines are subunit vaccines that contain carbohydrates antigens that are linked to an immunogenic carrier covalently. According to researchers, malaria parasite has a malarial toxin that is responsible for the pathogenesis. At the surface of the malaria parasite is a large amount of glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs) that anchors to the on the cell surface in the proteins. A glycan that is formed from reacting a synthetic pseudohexasaccharide, 2-iminothiolane and a sulfhydryl conjugates with a keyhole limpet haemocyanin activated by maleimide as protein carrier. This conjugate is used in vaccines to immunize.
How it was applied to solve a particular problem.
Malaria has been and still is one of the most devastating diseases in the tropics. With well over 40% of the world’s population living with the risk of malaria contraction. The conjugate containing vaccines serve as anti-toxin, which provides protection against pathogenesis.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the new technology relative to one other technology that is currently used to address the same problem?
The science of biosynthetic pathways of glycans is complex and unlike the genomes that were used before, glycans are very dyna...