It has been revealed the fact that there are new discoveries made about the dark matter of cellular biology. Check out the latest reports about this below.
Dark matter of cellular biology
The Chemistry Department of the University of Montreal has developed a new fluorogenic probe that can be used to analyze the interactions between proteins and sugars. Both of these biomolecule families are essential for life, and the findings of Professor Samy Cecioni and his students have opened up a wide range of potential applications.
Their research was recently published in the prestigious European journal Angewandte Chemie.
Sugar can be found in almost all the food we eat, and it plays a vital role in countless biological processes in living organisms. Naturally occurring sugar molecules are extremely diverse, which makes them even more important.
“All of the cells that make up living organisms are covered in a layer of sugar-based molecules known as glycans,” said Cecioni. “Sugars are therefore on the front line of almost all physiological processes and play a fundamental role in maintaining health and preventing disease.”
“For a long time,” he added, “scientists believed that the complex sugars found on the surface of cells were simply decorative. But we now know that these sugars interact with many other types of molecules, in particular with lectins, a large family of proteins.”
These proteins possess a unique ability to recognize and temporarily bind with sugars. Such interactions happen in various biological processes, such as during the immune response that is triggered by an infection.
Recently, lectins have become the subject of a lot of attention. This is because researchers have discovered that the phenomenon of lectins binding with sugars plays a crucial role in the occurrence of numerous diseases.
The more they explore the connections between sugars and lectins, the more the experts realize their significance in disease processes, Cecioni stated. Studies have demonstrated that such interactions are involved in bacteria colonizing our lungs, viruses invading our cells, and even cancer cells deceiving our immune system into believing that they are healthy cells.
