Most proteins within living organisms contain sugar chains. Recent advancements in cell biology have revealed that many of these sugar chains play important roles as signals for cell-surface recognition phenomena in multi-cellular organisms. In order to elucidate the biological information included in the sugar chains and link them with biology, a novel scientific field called 'glycobiology' has been established. This review will give an outline of the analytical techniques for the structural study of the sugar chains of glycoproteins, the structural characteristics of the sugar chains and the biosynthetic mechanism to produce such characteristics. Based on this knowledge, functional aspects of the sugar chains of glycohormones and of those in the immune system will be described to help others understand this new scientific field. Many proteins produced by mammalian cells contain covalently linked sugar chains and are called glycoproteins. However, because of the difficulty of studying the structure of the sugar chain moieties of glycoproteins, their functional aspects have been ignored during the long history of protein research. In contrast to nucleic acids and proteins, many different sugar chains can be formed by using a small number of monosaccharide units. Let us consider the smallest unit of chains: A-B. In the case of protein, only one structure is made when A and B are assigned to, for example, alanine and leucine. In the case of a sugar chain, however, many isomeric structures are formed. Suppose that A and B were assigned to N-acetylglucosamine and mannose, respectively. As shown in Fig. 1, N-acetylglucosamine can be linked at the four hydroxyl groups of mannose: C-2, C-3, C-4 and C-6. Therefore, four isomeric structures can be formed. Since two anomeric link-HO 0-NHCOCH, Fig. 1. Construction of sugar chains. Correspondence to A. Kobata,

Human fibrinogen contains four asparagine-linked sugar chains in one molecule. All B beta and gamma subunits obtained from both normal fibrinogen and abnormal fibrinogen Nagoya contain 1 mol each of an asparagine-linked sugar chain. The sugar chains were quantitatively liberated as radioactive oligosaccharides from the polypeptide portion by hydrazinolysis followed by N-acetylation and NaB3H4 reduction. By the combination of sequential exoglycosidase digestion and methylation analysis, the structures of the sugar chains of human fibrinogen were elucidated to be NeuAc alpha 2 leads to 6Gal beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc beta 1 leads to 2Man alpha 1 leads to 6(NeuAc alpha 2 leads to 6Gal beta 1 leads to 4GlcNac beta 1 leads to 2Man alpha 1 leads to 3)Man beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc and Gal beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc beta 1 leads to 2Man alpha 1 leads to 6(NeuAc alpha 2 leads to 6Gal beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc beta 1 leads to 2Man alpha 1 leads to 3)Man beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc beta 1 leads to 4GlcNAc. Neither quantitative nor qualitative differences were found between the sugar chain moieties of normal fibrinogen and fibrinogen Nagoya, indicating that the molecular basis of the abnormality in the latter may reside in its polypeptide moieties.

Alkaline phosphatase purified from human placenta contains a single asparagine-linked sugar chain in one molecule. The sugar chain was quantitatively liberated as radioactive oligosaccharides from the polypeptide moiety by hydrazinolysis followed by N-acetylation and NaB3H4 reduction, and separated by paper electrophoresis into one neutral and two acidic fractions. By a combination of sequential exoglycosidase digestion and methylation analysis, the structures of oligosaccharides in the neutral fraction were confirmed to be as follows: Gal beta 1----4GlcNAc beta 1----2Man alpha 1----6(Gal beta 1----4GlcNAc beta 1----2Man alpha 1----3)Man beta 1----4GlcNAc beta 1----4(+/- Fuc alpha 1----6)GlcNAc. The acidic oligosaccharide fractions were mixtures of mono- and disialyl derivatives of the neutral fraction. All the sialic acid residues of the sugar chains occur as the NeuAc alpha 2----3Gal group. In the case of monosialyl derivatives, the N-acetylneuraminic acid was exclusively linked to the Man alpha 1----3 arm.

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