Consortium for Functional Glycomics

The Consortium for Functional Glycomics, or CFG, is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, or NIGMS.

The CFG is a large research initiative to understand the role of carbohydrate-protein interactions at the cell surface in cell-cell communication.

Its scientific aims are, for each carbohydrate-binding protein (CBP):
 * 1) Define the  specificity and affinity of the selected CBP for natural and synthetic carbohydrate ligands
 * 2) For each CBP, establish the cell types involved in cell communication
 * 3) For each CBP, identify the ligands on biologically relevant cell types and determine the carbohydrate structure(s) that mediate CBP binding
 * 4) For each of the selected CBPs determine how CBP-ligand interactions mediate cell communication
 * 5) Determine the structures of selected CBPs
 * 6) For each CBP identify the glycosyltransferases (or degradative enzymes) responsible for expression of its carbohydrate ligand
 * 7) Determine the extent to which regulation of glycosylation modulates the expression of CBP ligands and controls CBP function

It includes: It also includes additional participating investigators from a dozen or so other universities worldwide.
 * UCSD School of Medicine's Glycobiology Research and Training Center (GRTC)
 * The Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
 * The Shemyakin & Ovchinnikov Institute (Moscow, Russia)
 * The University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
 * The University of Dundee (Dundee, Scotland)
 * The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology
 * The University of Michigan Medical Center