Sugars are everywhere, involved in processes related to energy storage, used as molecular frameworks for defining structures, and mediating interactions related to life and disease. Glycoscience aims at unravelling the role of glycans (carbohydrates, saccharides, or glycans) in systems of biological and biomedical interest and ultimately, in life. However, despite the demonstrated role of sugars as recognition entities, the exploitation of relevant sugar–protein interactions for pathological events is still far from its optimum. RECGLYCANMR is trying to answer many questions that remain open in the field. How do carbohydrate-binding-proteins (lectins) obtain their exquisite specificity? How is a complex glycan recognised, showing several chemically identical saccharides units and antennae? How is saccharide promiscuity towards diverse competing proteins modulated? Alternatively, how is competition versus one given lectin handled by the competing glycans? Is it a stochastic or thermodynamic matter? Both? The key question: is there any ‘sugar code’? In that case, is it now fully achieved? RECGLYCANMR uses nuclear magnetic resonance as major tool for disentangling, at the highest possible resolution, interaction events in which sugars are involved. Glycan recognition NMR studies have been till now constrained to in vitro methodologies. However, the selectivity of lectins versus glycans and the modulation of sugars’ promiscuity should likely be modulated by the environment. Indeed, the cell is a special one. Thus, RECGLYCANMR focuses on studying these recognition events in a context similar to the natural one: within the cell and at the cell surface. A crowded ambient exists in cell where viscosity is huge respect to water and there are many interacting entities.
RECGLYCANMR employs a multidisciplinary methodology that synergistically combines state-of-the-art chemical biology methods, in-cell and biophysics protocols under crowding conditions to provide solutions related to glycan molecular recognition and their involvement in numerous diseases.