Various biological functions of carbohydrate chains learned fromglycosyltransferase-deficient mice

摘要

Carbohydrate chains are attached to various proteins and lipids and modify theirfunctions. The complex structures of carbohydrate chains, which have various biologicalfunctions, are involved not only in regulating protein conformation, transport, andstability but also in cell–cell and cell–matrix interactions. These functionalcarbohydrate structures are designated as “glyco-codes.” Carbohydrate chains areconstructed through complex reactions of glycosyltransferases, glycosidases, nucleotidesugars, and protein and lipid substrates in a cell. To elucidate the functions ofcarbohydrate chains, I and my colleagues generated and characterized knockout (KO) mice ofgalactosyltransferase family genes. In this review, I introduce our studies aboutgalactosyltransferase family genes together with related studies performed by otherresearchers, which I presented in my award lecture for the Ando-Tajima Prize of theJapanese Association for Laboratory Animal Science (JALAS) in 2019.