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Equipment and Services

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The facility provides techniques and services that are developed and tailored for researchers who require assistance in glycomics. The facility is spread throughout seven nodes across Canada. It also houses one of the two 15 FT-ICR-MS instruments in Canada, as well as one of eight fully automated oligosaccharide synthesizers—The Glyconeer®—in the world.

Services and Techniques

If you have projects that require glycomics assistance, but the techniques are not listed on this page, please fill out the request form.

Service	Description	Technique/Equipment/Libraries
Glycan Screening	Screen defined glycan library containing 400+ compounds (e.g. ABO and Lewis histo-group antigens, gangliosides, human milk, plant, and bacterial oligosaccharides) to study glycan interactions with client’s target proteins Identify, characterize, and quantify protein-carbohydrate interactions in vivo	15 FT-ICR-MS Q Exactive Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer Q Exactive Orbitrap Classic-UHPLC with FD detector Q Exactive Orbitrap Ultra High Mass Range Mass photometer
Analytical R&D	Characterize oligosaccharide samples Analyze composition, linkage and size of polysaccharides Profile and quantify carbohydrates in complex sample matrices Determine structure of unusual or modified glycans	Nano-ES MALDI TOF/TOF 15 FT-ICR-MS
Carbohydrate Synthesis	Custom synthesis Provide services from probe molecule design to final purification Example of carbohydrates for immediate purchase include: oligosaccharides, glycopeptides, building blocks, unusual sialosides and Kdo glycosides, human blood group antigens, sphingolipids, mimetics and enzyme probes, glycoconjugates. Check our Compound Catalogue HERE	Automated glycan synthesis (Glyconeer 2.1) Semipreparative chromatography
Glycan-ligand Discovery	Profile protein-glycan interactions from whole cell/tissue and purified samples Identify and quantify weak carbohydrate-protein interactions that are not typically detectable by other methods	Liquid Glycan Array (LiGA) Lectin microarray with dual and single-color analysis Catch-release MS assay Liposomal Nanoparticles assay (ZetaSizer)
Glycomics Drug Discovery & High-Throughput Screening	Develop and validate novel target or cell-based assays High-content image-based assays including cell painting Identify, confirm and develop hits Uses in-house bioactive collections containing glycan libraries (65,000 compounds), natural product extracts (8,000 structures), drug-like small molecule libraries (147,000 compounds), gram negatives libraries, kinase inhibitor libraries, and others In-suite cloud-based data management and analysis including batch corrections, curve fitting, hit filtering, and other analysis tasks	Fully automated and enclosed platform for cell-based and target-based screening High-content quantitative cell analysis (Cellomics VTi, Molecular Devices ImageXpress Micro Systems) Quantitative optical screening for cell-based kinetic assays (FLIPR)
Biophysical & Structural Biology Analysis	Characterize and quantify biomolecular complexes and their molecular interactions Crystallize protein complexes with glycans Analysis of glycoproteomics NMR is suitable for high-throughput screening	Microscale thermophoresis (Nanotempter Monolith) Nano ITC (TA instruments) Circular Dichroism (Jasco J-815 Spectropolarimeter) Protein crystallization with liquid handling robot (Mosquito Crystal Gryphon LCP) Mass spectrometry (Orbitrap Fusion Lumos Tribid Mass spectrometer, UPLC-SYNAPT G2 System) High-field NMR (Bruker 600 MHz equipped with helium cryoprobe)
Molecular Glycobiology	Express specialized glycosidases and carbohydrate-active enzymes Optimize protein expression of in-house expression vectors	Streptomyces strains Plasmid constructs Molecular archives (cDNA, shRNA) Carbohydrate-active enzyme repository
Tissue Culture & Cell Imaging	Study cell functions, gene expression, cellular cytotoxicity Analyze microorganisms, single cells and microscopic particles Maintain, store, develop, and experiment cell lines for clients	Cell sorting (CyFlowTM Cube 6 V2m, BioSorter) Collection of cell lines (human, mammalian, transgenic mouse) Biosafety Level 2 Cell Culture Cabinets High-content microscope (Molecular Devices ImageXpress Micro Confocal Imaging System)
Microbial Glycome Analysis	Extract biofilm polysaccharide Analyze structure of microbial glycans	GC-MS (Agilent Technology Ensemble 5977B) MALDI-TOF MS (Bruker UltrafleXtreme) NMR (Bruker Ascend TM600 Hyphenated)
Glycoengineering	Reduce heterogeneity and improve consistency in glycosylation Alter pharmacokinetic properties of glycosylated proteins	Specialized E. coli strain with a dual plasmid system - optimization of glycoprotein expression In vitro enzymatic remodelling of protein glycans

Canadian Glycomics Network
E5-33 Gunning/Lemieux Chemistry Centre
University of Alberta, T6G 2G2
Tel: 780-492-6204
Fax: 780-492-4147

Equipment and Services

Services and Techniques

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