Have you ever wondered where different sialylation states of the EGF receptor are located on the cell surface? Here you go:

This enables us to map glycoforms of individual proteins as well as their organization on the cell membrane in the native state.

Here, we demonstrate the first spatial mapping of the cell-surface glycoproteome at true molecular resolution. We target proteins of interest with antibody-nanobody constructs and address glycosylation with either lectins or metabolic oligosaccharide engineering.

Every cell in the human body is surrounded by the glycocalyx, the "sugar coat" of the cell. A key component of the glycocalyx are glycosylated proteins. Indeed, virtually all cell-surface proteins are glycosylated.

Strikingly, we found that glycan patterns communicate cell state via the glycocalyx. We can make these visible: Below, each dot is one cell, and each color is a different stage of cancer progression. Just looking at the glycocalyx, we can see which cell is at which stage in the oncogenic cascade.

These images look pretty, but can we do more with them? Turns out, we can! We developed an analysis pipeline to understand how the different glycan species talk to each other. It turns out: They are organized in highly specific ways on the cell surface.

With this, we obtained an “atlas of glycans” on a range of sample types, from cultured cells over primary immune cells to neurons and patient tissue. Each dot in the image below is one glycan (sub-)unit, resolved at the nanometer scale.

We tackled this problem by labeling different glycan units within the glycocalyx using lectins. These lectins were tagged with DNA barcodes, which we used for multiplexed DNA-PAINT super-resolution microscopy.

All cells in the human body are covered by the glycocalyx, a complex and dense layer glycosylated species. The glycocalyx is centrally involved in various processes in health and disease, for example, in cancer progression and immune system regulation.

GLYCAN ATLASSING: NANOSCALE ANALYSIS OF GLYCOCALYX ARCHITECTURE ENABLES FUNCTIONAL TRACING OF CELL STATE 🍭🔬🧬
Don’t judge a book by its cover - judge a cell by its cover! We can now trace how cell state is encoded in glycocalyx state. #glycotime #microscopy

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...