Novel Insight Into Glycosaminoglycan Biosynthesis Based on Gene Expression Profiles

Yi-Fan Huang; Shuji Mizumoto; Morihisa Fujita

doi:10.3389/fcell.2021.709018

Novel Insight Into Glycosaminoglycan Biosynthesis Based on Gene Expression Profiles

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Sep 6:9:709018. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.709018. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yi-Fan Huang¹, Shuji Mizumoto², Morihisa Fujita¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China.
² Department of Pathobiochemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan.

Abstract

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) including chondroitin sulfate, dermatan sulfate, heparan sulfate, and keratan sulfate, except for hyaluronan that is a free polysaccharide, are covalently attached to core proteins to form proteoglycans. More than 50 gene products are involved in the biosynthesis of GAGs. We recently developed a comprehensive glycosylation mapping tool, GlycoMaple, for visualization and estimation of glycan structures based on gene expression profiles. Using this tool, the expression levels of GAG biosynthetic genes were analyzed in various human tissues as well as tumor tissues. In brain and pancreatic tumors, the pathways for biosynthesis of chondroitin and dermatan sulfate were predicted to be upregulated. In breast cancerous tissues, the pathways for biosynthesis of chondroitin and dermatan sulfate were predicted to be up- and down-regulated, respectively, which are consistent with biochemical findings published in the literature. In addition, the expression levels of the chondroitin sulfate-proteoglycan versican and the dermatan sulfate-proteoglycan decorin were up- and down-regulated, respectively. These findings may provide new insight into GAG profiles in various human diseases including cancerous tumors as well as neurodegenerative disease using GlycoMaple analysis.

Keywords: GlycoMaple; chondroitin sulfate (CS); dermatan sulfate (DS); glycosaminoglycan (GAG); heparan sulfate (HS); hyaluronan (HA); keratan sulfate (KS); proteoglycan (PG).