Consortium for Functional Glycomics

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The Consortium for Functional Glycomics, or CFG, is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, or NIGMS.

The CFG is a large research initiative to understand the role of carbohydrate-protein interactions at the cell surface in cell-cell communication.

Its scientific aims are, for each carbohydrate-binding protein (CBP):

1. Define the specificity and affinity of the selected CBP for natural and synthetic carbohydrate ligands
2. For each CBP, establish the cell types involved in cell communication
3. For each CBP, identify the ligands on biologically relevant cell types and determine the carbohydrate structure(s) that mediate CBP binding
4. For each of the selected CBPs determine how CBP-ligand interactions mediate cell communication
5. Determine the structures of selected CBPs
6. For each CBP identify the glycosyltransferases (or degradative enzymes) responsible for expression of its carbohydrate ligand
7. Determine the extent to which regulation of glycosylation modulates the expression of CBP ligands and controls CBP function

It includes:

• UCSD School of Medicine's Glycobiology Research and Training Center (GRTC)
• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
• The Shemyakin & Ovchinnikov Institute (Moscow, Russia)
• The University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
• The University of Dundee (Dundee, Scotland)
• The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology
• The University of Michigan Medical Center

It also includes additional participating investigators from a dozen or so other universities worldwide.