alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-glycoengineering
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Analyze and engineer protein glycosylation — scan sequences for N-glycosylation sequons (N-X-S/T), predict O-glycosylation hotspots, and reach curated glycoengineering tools (NetOGlyc, GlycoShield, GlycoWorkbench). Use when identifying or designing glycosylation sites, optimizing therapeutic-antibody or biologic glycoforms, or doing glycoprotein engineering and vaccine-design work. Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.
Install
npx vskill@latest install alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-glycoengineeringSKILL.md
Glycoengineering
Overview
Glycosylation is the most common and complex post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins, affecting over 50% of all human proteins. Glycans regulate protein folding, stability, immune recognition, receptor interactions, and pharmacokinetics of therapeutic proteins. Glycoengineering involves rational modification of glycosylation patterns for improved therapeutic efficacy, stability, or immune evasion.
Two major glycosylation types:
- N-glycosylation: Attached to asparagine (N) in the sequon N-X-[S/T] where X ≠ Proline; occurs in the ER/Golgi
- O-glycosylation: Attached to serine (S) or threonine (T); no strict consensus motif; primarily GalNAc initiation
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when:
- Antibody engineering: Optimize Fc glycosylation for enhanced ADCC, CDC, or reduced immunogenicity
- Therapeutic protein design: Identify glycosylation sites that affect half-life, stability, or immunogenicity
- Vaccine antigen design: Engineer glycan shields to focus immune responses on conserved epitopes
- Biosimilar characterization: Compare glycan patterns between reference and biosimilar
- Drug target analysis: Does glycosylation affect target engagement for a receptor?
- Protein stability: N-glycans often stabilize proteins; identify sites for stabilizing mutations
Does NOT Trigger
| Scenario | Use Instead | |
|---|---|---|
| Glycan/carbohydrate cheminformatics (structures, descriptors, SMILES) | alterlab-rdkit | |
| Identifying glycopeptides from mass-spectrometry raw data | alterlab-pyopenms | |
| Predicting the 3D structure of the glycoprotein itself | alterlab-alphafold, alterlab-boltz | |
| MD simulation of a glycan shield (setup, force fields, trajectories) | alterlab-molecular-dynamics | |
| Looking up a protein's curated sequence features in UniProt | alterlab-uniprot |
N-Glycosylation Sequon Analysis
Scanning for N-Glycosylation Sites
N-glycosylation occurs at the sequon N-X-[S/T] where X ≠ Proline.
Mutating N-Glycosylation Sites
O-Glycosylation Analysis
Heuristic O-Glycosylation Hotspot Prediction
External Glycoengineering Tools
1. NetOGlyc 4.0 (O-glycosylation prediction)
Web service for high-accuracy O-GalNAc site prediction:
- URL: https://services.healthtech.dtu.dk/services/NetOGlyc-4.0/
- Input: FASTA protein sequence
- Output: Per-residue O-glycosylation probability scores
- Method: Neural network trained on experimentally verified O-GalNAc sites
NetOGlyc 4.0 has no stable public REST API — the CGI submission endpoint and its form parameters change between web-service revisions. For reliable results, submit FASTA at the web interface and download the result table:
- NetOGlyc 4.0 (O-GalNAc): https://services.healthtech.dtu.dk/services/NetOGlyc-4.0/
- NetNGlyc 1.0 (N-glyc): https://services.healthtech.dtu.dk/services/NetNGlyc-1.0/
The standalone packages are also downloadable from those pages for offline/batch runs. Use the inline find_n_glycosylation_sequons above as a fast pre-screen.
2. GlycoShield-MD (Glycan Shielding Analysis)
GlycoShield-MD analyzes how glycans shield protein surfaces during MD simulations:
- URL: https://gitlab.mpcdf.mpg.de/dioscuri-biophysics/glycoshield-md/
- Use: Map glycan shielding on protein surface over MD trajectory
- Output: Per-residue shielding fraction, visualization
GlycoSHIELD is not on PyPI (verified 2026-09 — pip install glycoshield fails with 404). Install it from the project's GitLab repository following its own README, which also documents the expected inputs: a glycoprotein topology (PDB), a trajectory, and the glycan residue names to treat as the shield. Output is a per-residue shielding fraction you can map onto the surface — the number that tells you which epitopes a glycan actually occludes.
3. GlycoWorkbench (Glycan Structure Drawing/Analysis)
- URL: https://github.com/glycoinfo/eurocarbdb
- Use: Draw glycan structures, calculate masses, annotate MS spectra
- Format: GlycoCT, IUPAC condensed glycan notation
4. Experimentally verified glycosylation: GlyGen (and GlyConnect)
GlyGen (api.glygen.org) is the route that currently works programmatically — verified 2026-09 with plain GET requests returning JSON:
GlyConnect (https://glyconnect.expasy.org/) remains an excellent curated resource to browse, but its public REST routes are unreliable: as of 2026-09 /api/proteins/uniprot/{acc} returns HTTP 500 and the Swagger spec 404s. Use the web interface for GlyConnect, and GlyGen for scripted access.
5. UniCarbKB (Glycan Structure Database)
- URL: https://www.unicarbkb.org/ (the bare
unicarbkb.orgredirects here) - Use: Browse glycan structures, search by mass or composition
- Format: GlycoCT or IUPAC notation
Key Glycoengineering Strategies
For Therapeutic Antibodies
| Goal | Strategy | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enhance ADCC | Defucosylation at Fc Asn297 | Afucosylated IgG1 has ~50× better FcγRIIIa binding | |
| Reduce immunogenicity | Remove non-human glycans | Eliminate α-Gal, NGNA epitopes | |
| Improve PK half-life | Sialylation | Sialylated glycans extend half-life | |
| Reduce inflammation | Hypersialylation | IVIG anti-inflammatory mechanism | |
| Create glycan shield | Add N-glycosites to surface | Masks vulnerable epitopes (vaccine design) |
Common Mutations Used
| Mutation | Effect | |
|---|---|---|
| N297A/Q (IgG1) | Removes Fc glycosylation (aglycosyl) | |
| N297D (IgG1) | Removes Fc glycosylation | |
| S298A/E333A/K334A | Increases FcγRIIIa binding | |
| F243L (IgG1) | Increases defucosylation | |
| T299A | Removes Fc glycosylation |
Glycan Notation
IUPAC Condensed Notation (Monosaccharide abbreviations)
| Symbol | Full Name | Type | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glc | Glucose | Hexose | |
| GlcNAc | N-Acetylglucosamine | HexNAc | |
| Man | Mannose | Hexose | |
| Gal | Galactose | Hexose | |
| Fuc | Fucose | Deoxyhexose | |
| Neu5Ac | N-Acetylneuraminic acid (Sialic acid) | Sialic acid | |
| GalNAc | N-Acetylgalactosamine | HexNAc |
Complex N-Glycan Structure
This is the start of the file. Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub.
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Source
- SKILL.md in the repositoryCheckingskills/bioinformatics/alterlab-glycoengineering/SKILL.md
Popularity
- Repository stars
- 69
- Repository forks
- 14
- 7-day trend score
- 21
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