# Development of multifunctional probes for profiling microbial glycans

> **NIH NIH U01** · MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · 2020 · $464,722

## Abstract

Abstract:
Microbial glycans are critical for viability and virulence, and they mediate interactions of
microbes with other organisms, including their hosts. The benefits of understanding
microbial glycan structure and function are wide-ranging, including the development of
new antimicrobial therapies, novel strategies to control chronic autoimmune conditions
(e.g., Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, asthma), and innovative approaches to enhance
health through modulating microbiome composition. A major impediment to achieving
these benefits is the difficulty of identifying the glycans present on an organism and
elucidating microbial glycan function. Microbial glycans contain carbohydrate building
blocks absent from their mammalian counterparts, and glycan function depends on
these orthogonal molecular features. However, the majority of tools available for glycan
analysis are designed for mammalian glycans. As a result, the analysis of microbial
glycans depends on specialized expertise in glycobiology and is therefore inaccessible to
the broad scientific community. The goal of this application is to address the need for
facile tools by generating a curated set of probes for detecting, isolating, and
interrogating the function of microbial glycans and the microbial species upon which
they are presented. We plan to generate these microbial glycan analysis probes (mGAPs)
from 20 human humoral lectins, which mediate immune defense through microbial
glycan engagement. Aim 1 focuses on generating mGAPs using versatile ligation
strategies, including biotin ligase and sortase-mediated conjugations. Together these
approaches provide the means to site-specifically append diverse reporter groups or
other functionality for user-defined applications. The experiments in Aim 2 involve
benchmarking the microbial glycan binding specificity of the mGAPs to render these
tools maximally useful to researchers in the field. Aim 3 focuses on testing mGAP-based
lectins as tools to investigate microbial community composition, as mGAPs have the
requisite attributes for multiplexing and high-throughput analysis. Finally, mGAP kits
will be assembled and disseminated to researchers to probe lectin and microbial glycan
structure and function.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9989812
- **Project number:** 5U01CA231079-03
- **Recipient organization:** MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
- **Principal Investigator:** Barbara Imperiali
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $464,722
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9989812

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9989812, Development of multifunctional probes for profiling microbial glycans (5U01CA231079-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9989812. Licensed CC0.

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