Unicarbkb: Emergent knowledgebase for glycomics

Although many international glycobio informatics activities have tried to address the challenges of developing informatics to support glycomics analysis, the scope of such an endeavor is huge. Glycomics encompasses the analysis of the glycan complement of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and includes free oligosaccharides, glycoproteins, glycolipids, proteoglycans, peptidoglycans, and polysaccharides. As a start to the development of such a knowledge base, we have initially focused on capturing information acquired from glycoproteomics analysis. This chapter outlines the current scope of UniCarbKB (www.unicarbkb.org) to build a curated knowledge base that captures information on glycan structures and accompanying glycoprotein information, inclusive of information pertinent to global and site-specific glycosylation. Access to high-quality data collections will further the development of innovative glycoprotein analysis tools, which will substantially improve our understanding of the roles of glycans and glycoproteins in systems biology.