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

Abstract

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.