National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Develops Three Key Tools for Sugar Chain Research.

Tokyo, Japan, Oct 22, 2005 - (JCNN) - The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) announced on October 20 that it has developed three sugar chain analysis tools. A sugar chain is a thread-like biological molecule existing in a living organism.

The AIST Research Center for Glycoscience first cloned a glycogene (a gene of sugar chain) from human genome information. Then, using the cloned gene, the research center developed an automated sugar chain synthesis system, which can synthesize a glycogene library (i.e. a mixture made of several sugar chains) in two days.

Further, in collaboration with Shimadzu and Mitsui Knowledge Industry, the research center has devised a rapid analysis system, which is based on mass spectrometry library and can analyze the structure of sugar chains in a 1-nanogram sample in a few minutes.

AIST expects that the newly-developed three tools will contribute to research on sugar chains, a key for research for regenerative medicine, cancer, immunization, and infections, which will lead to developing early diagnostic methods and identifying target molecules for future drugs.

Source: JCN http://www.japancorp.net

Copyright [c] 2005 Japan Corporate News Network. All rights reserved.