Functional Glyco-Affinity Precipitation/Capturing for Enhanced Affinity Proteomics

Proteomics research typically starts by reducing the sample complexity through multidimensional separation methods based on the unique characteristics of the proteins or their peptides followed by identification and quantification. Protein-carbohydrate bindings play very important roles in cell-cell communication, cell proliferation and differentiation as well as microbial adhesion. Therefore, carbohydrates can serve as protein capturing ligand for protein purification and identification and protein-carbohydrate binding research provides important insights for basic biological research, medicine and the biotechnology as well as drug development. In the past decades, a diverse carbohydrate-based technology, termed glycotechnology, such as glyco-arrays and glyco-affinity chromatography, and glyco-affinity probe, have been developed. A guiding principle of these glycotechnologies is the display of carbohydrates onto a pertinent support or carrier such as glass slide, microplate, and microbeads as well as functional polymers and probe molecules. This review highlights recent progresses of carbohydrate-containing intelligent polymers for rapid and efficient glyco-affinity precipitation purification of carbohydrate-binding protein and the enhanced proteomics research. Specifically, two innovation methods, inverse reversible thermal-responsive glyco-affinity precipitation and magnetic assistant glyco-affinity precipitation purification of carbohydrate-binding protein for enhanced proteomics application are summarized.