ST1-05: Using carbohydrate microarrays to study cell wall related enzymes

Wednesday, May 4, 2011: 8:05 PM
Grand Ballroom A, 2nd fl (Sheraton Seattle)
William G.T. Willats, Section for Plant Glycobiology, Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark and Alexandra Fagerström, Section for Plant Glycobiology, Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark
We have developed carbohydrate microarray technology for a wide range of applications relating to plant cell walls.

As a part of our work we have assembled a large library of poly- and oligosaccharides which has been used for the screening of antibodies, carbohydrate binding modules and other glycan binding ligands to identify binding and to verify selectivities. The arrays have also been used to screen activity of carbohydrate active enzymes. Currently we are expanding this work further to include the identification of binding and activity under different conditions to be able to provide a better understanding of the enzymes in a more high throughput analysis. Further, this work will hopefully become useful as a tool to screen for potential substrates and activities in proteins with unknown function, but with expected enzyme activity relating to plant cell walls.