Consortium for Functional Glycomics
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The Consortium for Functional Glycomics, or CFG, is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, or NIGMS.
The CFG is a large research initiative to understand the role of carbohydrate-protein interactions at the cell surface in cell-cell communication.
Its scientific aims are, for each carbohydrate binding protein (CBP):
- Define the specificity and affinity of the selected CBP for natural and synthetic carbohydrate ligands
- For each CBP, establish the cell types involved in cell communication
- For each CBP, identify the ligands on biologically relevant cell types and determine the carbohydrate structure(s) that mediate CBP binding
- For each of the selected CBPs determine how CBP-ligand interactions mediate cell communication
- Determine the structures of selected CBPs
- For each CBP identify the glycosyltransferases (or degradative enzymes) responsible for expression of its carbohydrate ligand
- Determine the extent to which regulation of glycosylation modulates the expression of CBP ligands and controls CBP function
It includes:
- UCSD School of Medicine's Glycobiology Research and Training Center (GRTC)
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
- The Shemyakin & Ovchinnikov Institute (Moscow, Russia)
- The University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
- The University of Dundee (Dundee, Scotland)
- The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology
- The University of Michigan Medical Center
It also includes additional participating investigators from a dozen or so other universities worldwide.Template:Org-stub