An Automated Approach to Assess Relative Galectin-Glycan Affinity Following Glycan Microarray Analysis

Numerous studies have highlighted the utility of glycan microarray analysis for the elucidation of protein-glycan interactions. However, most current glycan microarray studies analyze glycan binding protein (GBP)-glycan interactions at a single protein concentration. While this approach provides useful information related to a GBP's overall binding capabilities, extrapolation of true glycan binding preferences using this method fails to account for printing variations or other factors that may confound relative binding. To overcome this limitation, we examined glycan array binding of three galectins over a range of concentrations to allow for a more complete assessment of binding preferences. This approach produced a richer data set than single concentration analysis and provided more accurate identification of true glycan binding preferences. However, while this approach can be highly informative, currently available data analysis approaches make it impractical to perform binding isotherms for each glycan present on currently available platforms following GBP evaluation. To overcome this limitation, we developed a method to directly optimize the efficiency of assessing association constants following multi-GBP concentration glycan array analysis. To this end, we developed programs that automatically analyze raw array data (kdMining) to generate output graphics (kaPlotting) following array analysis at multiple doses. These automatic programing methods reduced processing time from 32.8 h to 1.67 min. Taken together, these results demonstrate an effective approach to glycan array analysis that provides improved detail and efficiency when compared to previous methods.