Some other contemporary advances in glycolipid-containing arrays and microarrays are also discussed. Introduction Over the last decade oligosaccharide CCB02 microarrays have become essential tools in glycobiology and are revolutionizing the unravelling of carbohydrate-protein interactions in health and disease processes, infectious and non-infectious. and noninfectious. A variety of immobilization strategies have been described for generation of the microarrays [1C9]. This review is focused on the neoglycolipid (NGL)-based microarray system developed in our laboratory, the first microarray system for sequence-defined oligosaccharides. The NGL technology The impetus for establishing the NGL technology in 1985 was the need for a sensitive micromethod for direct binding analyses with oligosaccharides released from glycoproteins to study recognition by antibodies and other carbohydrate-recognizing proteins [10]. Inspired by the thin-layer chromatography (TLC)-binding method for glycolipids [11], we designed an approach that involved linking oligosaccharides to an amino-phospholipid tag to make artificial glycolipids, NGLs. Reductive-amination was used to conjugate reducing oligosaccharides, and also for reductively released in conjunction with the TLC-binding experiments. Fluorescent NGLs were developed for detection of NGLs during chromatography [12] and, oxime-linked NGLs to preserve ring-closed monosaccharide cores. The latter is advantageous for oligosaccharides where core regions are part of the recognition motif [13]. NGL-based microarrays Following proof-of-concept studies in 2002 [14], the NGL-technology became the basis of a unique state-ofCthe-art oligosaccharide microarray system [15;16?;17] (Figure 1). The technology allows expansion of the library of probes via the designer microarray approach, a term used for microarrays of NGLs derived from ligand-bearing glycomes in order to reveal the oligosaccharide ligands they harbor, so that these can be isolated and characterized. Open in a separate window Figure CCB02 1 Schematic representation of the NGL-based microarray system. In the NGL-based microarrays, the probes are all lipid-linked and comprise both NGLs (prepared from natural or chemically synthesized oligosaccharides) and glycolipids (natural or synthetic. The library is enriched by its content of chemically synthesized glycolipids from the Akira Hasegawa, Makoto Kiso CD22 and Hideharu Ishida collection (http://www.mizutanifdn.or.jp/20thsympo/pdf/10Kiso.pdf). The NGL-based microarray system currently contains ~830 sequence-defined probes, with a high content of natural oligosaccharide sequences, some are difficult to synthesize (Figure 2); 492 of these probes are present in the current version of screening microarrays [18]. Other probes are included in various focused arrays for specific projects. A new version of screening microarrays including these will be generated in 2014. Open in a separate window Figure 2 Current composition of NGL-based microarrays. The NGL and glycolipid probes are robotically dispensed onto nitrocellulose-coated glass slides at low fmol levels in a liposome CCB02 formulation in the presence of carrier lipids [17]. This mode of presentation allows an element of mobility, simulating to some extent the cell surface display of glycans. The applicability of the microarray system to glycolipids and to oligosaccharides derived from them, makes it possible to clinch the role of carbohydrate and ceramide moieties in recognition [19]. Moreover NGLs, like glycolipids, can be incorporated into live cells to evaluate biological significance of microarray binding data [19]. An integral component of the microarray system is a database that holds all of the microarray data, the experimental conditions and information on saccharide probes and proteins [20] (Figure 3). There is associated interactive software for presentation of microarray data, filtering, sorting and deep mining of every data point. The software is being refactored to accept a wide range of experimental formats, and to be made available to the scientific community. Open in a separate window Figure 3 The integrated microarray data analysis: database and interactive software. Since 2003, initially with support from the UK Research Councils Basic Technology Initiative Glycoarrays, NGL-based microarrays at Imperial College have been available to the scientific community for screening analyses, the remit of the Facility being collaborative research. Since 2012, the facility has become a Wellcome Trust-funded Biomedical Resource and is entering to a new phase of activity with up-to-date instrumentation and bioinformatics support. The facility will soon launch a new website for on-line requests of microarray analyses and for data sharing. Some recent applications of NGL-based microarrays The NGL-based microarray system has been applied in investigation of a considerable number of bio-recognition systems cited in [21]. Below are some.