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Building meaningful models of glycoproteins

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 14, page 354 (2007)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

The building of crystallographic models of proteins is guided by understanding of the primary structure of proteins and by well-established and rigorously applied stereochemical principles. However, a cursory survey of Protein Data Bank entries containing oligosaccharides suggests that of the order of one-third of entries contain significant errors in carbohydrate stereochemistry, nomenclature or even consistency with the electron density maps. Many of the stereochemical errors can be detected by reference to conformational studies of glycans1,2 and to publicly available resources (http://www.glycosciences.de/tools/). However, these errors also indicate that there is a wide discrepancy in the sophistication of building and validation tools available for protein and carbohydrate models.

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  1. Division of Structural Biology, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7BN, UK

    Max Crispin, David I. Stuart & E. Yvonne Jones

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  1. Max Crispin
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  2. David I. Stuart
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  3. E. Yvonne Jones
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Crispin, M., Stuart, D. & Jones, E. Building meaningful models of glycoproteins. Nat Struct Mol Biol 14, 354 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb0507-354a

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