title: GlyTouCan 1.0--The international glycan structure repository.
abstract: Glycans are known as the third major class of biopolymers, next to DNA and proteins. They cover the surfaces of many cells, serving as the 'face' of cells, whereby other biomolecules and viruses interact. The structure of glycans, however, differs greatly from DNA and proteins in that they are branched, as opposed to linear sequences of amino acids or nucleotides. Therefore, the storage of glycan information in databases, let alone their curation, has been a difficult problem. This has caused many duplicated efforts when integration is attempted between different databases, making an international repository for glycan structures, where unique accession numbers are assigned to every identified glycan structure, necessary. As such, an international team of developers and glycobiologists have collaborated to develop this repository, called GlyTouCan and is available at http://glytoucan.org/, to provide a centralized resource for depositing glycan structures, compositions and topologies, and to retrieve accession numbers for each of these registered entries. This will thus enable researchers to reference glycan structures simply by accession number, as opposed to by chemical structure, which has been a burden to integrate glycomics databases in the past.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Soka University, Tokyo 192-8577, Japan Glycoscience and Glycotechnology Research Group, AIST, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan kkiyoko@soka.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Kiyoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Aoki-Kinoshita
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Sanjay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Agravat
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Soka University, Tokyo 192-8577, Japan.
authors.forename: Nobuyuki P
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5928-5931
authors.initials: NP
authors.lastname: Aoki
authors.affiliation: Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
authors.forename: Sena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Arpinar
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115,USA.
authors.forename: Richard D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Cummings
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Soka University, Tokyo 192-8577, Japan.
authors.forename: Akihiro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fujita
authors.affiliation: Glycoscience and Glycotechnology Research Group, AIST, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.
authors.forename: Noriaki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Fujita
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA.
authors.forename: Gerald M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Hart
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of National Sciences, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
authors.forename: Stuart M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Haslam
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Glycobiotechnology, Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshisuke
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kawasaki
authors.affiliation: The Noguchi Institute, Tokyo 173-0003, Japan.
authors.forename: Masaaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Matsubara
authors.affiliation: Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
authors.forename: Kelley W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Moreman
authors.affiliation: Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata 951-8510, Japan.
authors.forename: Shujiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Okuda
authors.affiliation: Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pierce
authors.affiliation: Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ranzinger
authors.affiliation: Glycoscience and Glycotechnology Research Group, AIST, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshihide
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shikanai
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Soka University, Tokyo 192-8577, Japan.
authors.forename: Daisuke
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shinmachi
authors.affiliation: Glycoscience and Glycotechnology Research Group, AIST, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Solovieva
authors.affiliation: Glycoscience and Glycotechnology Research Group, AIST, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshinori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Soka University, Tokyo 192-8577, Japan.
authors.forename: Shinichiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tsuchiya
authors.affiliation: The Noguchi Institute, Tokyo 173-0003, Japan.
authors.forename: Issaku
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yamada
authors.affiliation: Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: York
authors.affiliation: Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry, Dept. of Biochemistry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, 02118, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zaia
authors.affiliation: Glycoscience and Glycotechnology Research Group, AIST, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.
authors.forename: Hisashi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Narimatsu
mesh_terms: D062126:Databases, Chemical; D015394:Molecular Structure; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D011134:Polysaccharides