N-linked glycosylation

The different types of lipid-linked oligosaccharide (LLO) precursor produced in different organisms.

N-linked glycosylation is the attachment of an oligosaccharide, a carbohydrate consisting of several sugar molecules, sometimes also referred to as glycan, to a nitrogen atom (the amide nitrogen of an asparagine (Asn) residue of a protein), in a process called N-glycosylation, studied in biochemistry.[1] The resulting protein is called an N-linked glycan, or simply an N-glycan.

This type of linkage is important for both the structure[2] and function[3] of many eukaryotic proteins. The N-linked glycosylation process occurs in eukaryotes and widely in archaea, but very rarely in bacteria. The nature of N-linked glycans attached to a glycoprotein is determined by the protein and the cell in which it is expressed.[4] It also varies across species. Different species synthesize different types of N-linked glycan.

  1. ^ "Glycosylation". UniProt: Protein sequence and functional information.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Imperiali_1999 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Patterson_20056 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Drickamer_2006 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).