Cover of Essentials of Glycobiology

Essentials of Glycobiology, 3rd edition

Editors

Editors: Ajit Varki, Executive Editor,1 Richard D Cummings,2 Jeffrey D Esko,3 Pamela Stanley,4 Gerald W Hart,5 Markus Aebi,6 Alan G Darvill,7 Taroh Kinoshita,8 Nicolle H Packer,9 James H Prestegard,10 Ronald L Schnaar,11 and Peter H Seeberger12.

Affiliations

1 Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Medicine, Co-Director, Glycobiology Research and Training Center, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA
2 Professor of Surgery, Director, National Center for Functional Glycomics, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
3 Distinguished Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, Co-Director, Glycobiology Research and Training Center, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA
4 Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Chair and Professor of Cell Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York, USA
5 Professor and Chairman of Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
6 Professor of Mycology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
7 Regents Professor and Director, Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
8 Professor, Laboratory of Immunoglycobiology, WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
9 Professor of Glycoproteomics and Glycomics, Macquarie University and Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University, Sydney, Australia
10 Professor and Eminent Scholar, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
11 Professor, Departments of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
12 Director, Max-Planck-Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany
Cold Spring Harbor (NY): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 2015-.
Copyright 2015-2017 by The Consortium of Glycobiology Editors, La Jolla, California. All rights reserved.
Hardcopy Version at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory PressLogo of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
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Defined in the broadest sense, Glycobiology is the study of the structure, biosynthesis, biology, and evolution of saccharides (sugar chains or glycans) that are widely distributed in nature in all living life forms. Glycobiology is now one of the more rapidly growing fields in the natural sciences, with broad relevance to many areas of basic research, biomedicine, and biotechnology. The field includes the chemistry of carbohydrates, the enzymology of glycan formation and degradation, the recognition of glycans by specific proteins, roles of glycans in complex biological systems, and their analysis or manipulation by various techniques. The third edition of this primary textbook in the field continues in the prior tradition, seeking to provide basic overview of Glycobiology, directed towards the advanced undergraduate or the beginning graduate-level student of molecular and cellular biology and biomedicine. While efforts have been made to avoid a major increase in overall length of the text, substantial changes and improvements include the following: broader focus on all lineages of life forms in nature; wider range of topics, ranging from biology and medicine to chemistry and materials science; expanded international editorial board representing a wider range of expertise; wider range of contributing authors with expertise in specific areas; greatly expanded monosaccharide symbol nomenclature for the representation of glycans; and greater attention to informatics, and relevance to exploration of the glycome.