Download the Biotinylated Glycans Product Brochure (2022)

Biotinyl glycans are emerging as a valuable class of carbohydrate or glycoconjugate probes that allow exploitation of the strong affinity of avidin and streptavidin for biotin, a feature vastly utilized across molecular biology for decades. Techniques for the study of protein–carbohydrate interactions are of great interest in glycobiology and to this day, Sussex Research Laboratories Inc. has been developing biotinylated saccharides to advance research in the field.

Carbohydrate-protein interactions play crucial roles in a myriad of biological processes such as cell adhesion, inflammation and immune response. Such interactions, where glycans act as recognition elements or ligands, form the basis of specific recognition of carbohydrates by lectins (carbohydrate recognizing proteins) and are at the heart of glycobiology.

Sussex Research Laboratories Inc. has developed synthetic biotinyl glycan, glycoamino acid and glycopeptide reagents as tools to facilitate the functional analysis of lectins. Biotinylated glycan reagents may be used to:

• Determine binding specificities of lectins via glycan arrays
• Determine binding specificities of lectins via Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)
• Visualize lectin-expressing cells in vitro via fluorescent streptavidin or avidin beads coated with specific biotinylated glycans
• Visualize lectin-expressing cells in tissues.
• Purify lectins via affinity chromatography
• Screening

Sussex Research Laboratories Inc. retains the structure and biological integrity of the glycan ligands. O- and N-linked biotinylated sugars are stable and very reliable for use in the study of protein-carbohydrate interactions. Most biotinylated sugars from Sussex Research Laboratories Inc. incorporate short, monodisperse (discrete), amphiphilic polyethylene glycol (PEG) spacers such as triethylene glycol (PEG3), a 9-atom spacer, which may confer certain advantages over traditional hydrophobic alkyl (CH2)n linkers. PEG is a stable, amphiphilic spacer molecule that offsets the very hydrophobic nature of biotin. PEG enables solubility across a wide range of solvent systems including aqueous media.