Yoshiki Narimatsu Awarded the Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience 28th Research Grant for 2021

Congratulations to Yoshiki Narimatsu, who has been awarded the Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience 28th Research Grant for 2021 in the amount of $50,000 USD. Yoshiki will use these funds to conduct research at the Copenhagen Center for Glycomics as described in the project abstract below.

Project Abstract

Display of the Human Mucinome with Defined O-Glycans by Gene Engineered Cells

Mucins are a large family of heavily O-glycosylated proteins that cover all mucosal surfaces and are the major macromolecules in body fluids. Mucins serve in containment, barrier, clearance, and replenishing of the microbiota. Mucins are defined by their tandem repeat (TR) regions densely decorated with O-glycans. I hypothesize that the mucin TRs contain molecular cues that guide interactions with microbiota and serve to orient microbiomes and that these molecular cues consist of a higher-order assembly of multiple O-glycans with distinct structures and patterns created by characteristic TR sequences. I aim to develop a comprehensive cell-based platform for the display and production of all human mucin TR O-glycodomains with tunable O-glycan structures and patterns using small TR reporter constructs and glycoengineered isogenic human cells. The proposed program will develop a unique resource and enable us to decode the structures and functions of mucins in directing microbiomes, and lead to new strategies for molecular dissection of specific roles of microbial adhesins, glycosyl hydrolases, and glycopeptidases.