Emerging Principles for the Therapeutic Exploitation of Glycosylation

Understanding Glycosylation Glycosylation—the covalent addition of carbohydrates to proteins—is central to many biological processes. Recent advances in understanding the roles of glycans—for example, in protein folding and immune regulation—have revealed that glycans are also involved in many disease conditions, from cancer to microbial infection. Dalziel et al. (p. 10.1126/science.1235681 ) review the current knowledge of glycans in pathogen invasion, cancer, autoimmunity, and congenital diseases.