A team of researchers from Imperial College London's Division of Molecular Biosciences has received a grant of over US $4 million to support a research facility for understanding how sugars are involved in cell to cell communication.
The grant forms part of a US $40.7 million award which has been given to the Consortium for Functional Glycomics (CFG) - led from the Scripps Research Institute in California - of which the Imperial team is a part.
The consortium provides resources to more than 300 participating scientists worldwide who are engaged in research aimed at understanding how the sugary layer on the outside of cells enables cell to cell communication.
The Imperial research group will use the grant to focus on analysing the structures of sugars that are attached to lipids and proteins on the outside of cells. This sugary layer interacts with proteins and mediates a large number of cellular functions, so a greater understanding of the sugars that are present in glyco-lipids and glyco-proteins will lead to a better understanding of how cells work and relate to each other.
Professor Anne Dell, Principal Investigator of the Imperial research team explains: "Interaction between sugars and proteins is central to a large number of key cell functions, such as species-specific recognition of sperm by eggs in the reproductive process, and targeting white blood cells to the site of an infection. By looking at the structures of the sugars involved in these functions in greater detail than ever before, we will gain a better understanding of how these biological functions work, and why they sometimes go wrong.