Surface Plasmon Resonance and Sugar Chip Analysis for Sugar Chain-Protein Interactions

Abstract

Specific structural attributes of sugar chains determine their biological functions, through distinct binding interactions with proteins, other sugar chains, cells or viruses. We have developed a chip technology, in which structurally defined sugar chains are two-dimensionally immobilized on a surface, which mimics nature (Suda et al. 2004, 2006). The combination of our technology with Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) is a very powerful tool for the real-time study of the specific interactions between biological molecules, and could be used as a high-throughput screening method or as a novel diagnosis technology, because the experiment can be done without any labeling of targets. Not only for regular SPR apparatus, but our technology can be applied also for the so-called SPR Imaging apparatus.