Research
BioF:GREAT is an NSF-funded biofoundry whose research programme is organised around four connected thrusts. Together they run from the fundamental biochemistry of glycan assembly, through the tools and reagents that make glycans accessible to experiment, to the people trained to use them.
Research thrusts
Elucidating biological and biochemical rules
Defining the rules that govern glycan biosynthesis and recognition — how glycosyltransferase specificity, subcellular organisation and substrate availability combine to determine the glycan structures a cell actually makes, and how those structures are read out in health and disease.
Selective engineering of novel structures
Building defined glycan structures on demand. Chemoenzymatic synthesis with recombinant glycosyltransferases, engineered donors and analogs, and glycan engineering of proteins, lipids and cell surfaces to produce reagents and materials that cannot be isolated from natural sources.
Innovative glycoscience tools
Developing the instrumentation, reagents and software that make glycoscience tractable for non-specialists — glycomics and glycoproteomics workflows, enzyme and donor catalogues, expression-construct repositories, and AI/ML methods for glycoenzyme classification and structure prediction.
Expand the glycoscience workforce
Growing the community of researchers able to work with glycans, through hands-on training courses, curriculum development at high-school through graduate level, visiting-scholar programmes and discipline-based education research that tests what actually works.
Project portfolio
Research is carried out as collaborative projects. Internal projects pair BioF:GREAT laboratories with one another; external projects bring in collaborators from other institutions, agencies and companies.
Enabling capabilities
- Bioinformatics and AI — deep-learning methods for glycoenzyme classification and function prediction, and tools for mining and visualising glycoscience data.
- JAAG software — a web tool that generates AlphaFold 3 input for glycan modelling with correct stereochemistry.
- Glycoanalytics — glycomics, glycoproteomics, monosaccharide composition, linkage and mass-spectrometry services.
- Glycoenzyme catalogue — recombinant glycosyltransferases and nucleotide-sugar donors for chemoenzymatic synthesis.
Recent publications
The most recent BioF:GREAT publications are listed on the publications page.