GlycoVis: Visualizing Glycan Distribution in the Protein N-Glycosylation Pathwayin Mammalian Cells

Glycosylation pattern is an important quality attribute of protein therapeutics. It affects protein stability, half-life and even biological functions. The N-glycosylation pathway is a highly branched network. Although only a relative small number of enzymes involved in the pathway, a multitude of glycan intermediates can be produced. In order to study this network, GlycoVis was created to visualize the distribution of glycans and potential reaction paths leading to each glycan in the N-glycosylation network. The program was written in Matlab, interfacing with Graphviz. It incorporates substrate specificity of the enzymes involved in the pathway in a relationship matrix. Given an input of glycan distribution data, the program traces all the potential reaction paths leading to each glycan, and outputs pathway maps with glycans colored in line with their relative abundances.

糖基化模式（Glycosylation pattern）是蛋白质治疗药物的重要质量属性，可影响蛋白质的稳定性、半衰期乃至生物学功能。N-糖基化通路（N-glycosylation pathway）属于高度分支的网络结构，尽管该通路仅涉及相对较少的酶类，却可生成大量的聚糖中间体。为研究该网络，研究人员开发了GlycoVis工具，用于可视化N-糖基化通路中的聚糖分布情况，以及指向每种聚糖的潜在反应路径。该程序基于Matlab编写，并与Graphviz实现交互对接，通过关系矩阵整合了通路中各类酶的底物特异性信息。当输入聚糖分布数据后，该程序可追踪指向每种聚糖的所有潜在反应路径，并输出以相对丰度为依据对聚糖进行着色的通路图谱。