I am not sure that I should post this message here. But how could I get the message out if I felt that it would truely benefit our glycomics community?

In a 2008 paper (Proteomics, 2008, 8, 8-20, Parker et al.), experts in glycomics agree that there is an “urgent requirement for glycan specific databases and informatics”, and “key to the efforts in glycan structure analysis are bioinformatics tools that can rapidly interpret MS data”.

Maybe, such an informatics tool has become available, now.

We are inviting colleagues and experts to evaluate the software, GlycoPro, for automatic, high throughput N-glycan structure determination using MS/MS data of glycopeptides. ( text to link )

The software has an N-glycan structure library with over 140,000 entries based on biosynthetic rules. It’s built-in search engine can search thousands of ion trap MS/MS spectra against the library, assigns the glycan structure identified to each spectrum, and draws an N-glycan fragment picture for each of the MS/MS peaks matched.

Included in the library are structures with modified sugars, such as phosphorylated mannose, sulfated GlcNAc, and mono-, di- and tri-acetylated sialic acid.

While it is far from perfect, it may represent a significant step toward meeting some of the urgent needs of our glycomics community.