Reading the sugar code requires us to figure out the molecular structure of every single glycan molecules present on a cell.
Glycans are however found multiply attached to another biomolecules, such as lipids or proteins, which cause their structural analysis to be very challenging. Analysis of these glycan-decorated molecules (a.k.a glycoconjugates) by today's analytical methods has seen difficulties due to the ensemble-averaging in these methods i.e. molecules are analyzed collectively, causing information loss at individual level.
Project GlycoX aims to address this analytical challenge by imaging glycoconjugate molecules one-at-a-time using the ESIBD+SPM approach.
To learn more, see an excellent introduction to the analytical challenge of glycans by Prof. Sabine Flitsch (link).