Glycan Function Workshop at SfG 2023

The second "Workshop on Glycan Function Annotation," entitled "Defining Glycan Functions" will be held on November 4th at Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort in Kona on the big island of Hawaii, just prior to the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for GlycoBiology. The workshop is organized and chaired by Dr. Michael Tiemeyer and Dr. René Ranzinger from the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center and is sponsored by the GlyGen project with the support of NIH. A select group of glycobiology experts have been invited to participate in discussions and contribute their ideas for developing a framework of terms and concepts relating glycan functions to glycan structural features, motifs, and patterns.

Workshop Goals

This workshop builds on the results of the first "Workshop on Glycan Function Annotation" which was held in Padova, Italy, May 2023 in association with this year’s annual International BioCuration meeting. The first workshop brought together interested developers and leaders of international bioinformatics platforms to discuss what kinds of glycoscience data were currently available or were desirable for sharing across platforms, leading to concrete suggestions for improving the visibility and impact of glycan, glycosylation, and glycoconjugate data.

Among the recommendations of the first workshop was a proposal that the bioinformatics community would benefit from the organization of a second workshop that could harvest input from experts in glycan functions. It was anticipated that such experts could provide useful landmarks in the rapidly expanding terrain of functional glycobiology data that could guide the development of useful knowledgebases and cross-references across datatypes. With the collaborative input of data scientists, such landmarks could subsequently be developed into a glycan function ontology, similar to “GO” annotations for gene product functions. A glycan function ontology would provide a potentially powerful framework for connecting glycoscience data to many mainstream big data resources.  

Expected deliverables from the upcoming Kona workshop include:

1. Robust discussion and subsequent documentation that establishes some level of consensus on well-supported glycan functions.
2. Discussion and documentation of potential hierarchical relationships between glycan functions.
3. Discussion and documentation that connects functions to explicit glycan structures, structural motifs, features, or patterns whenever possible.
4. Discussion and documentation that highlights where ambiguities exist in connecting glycan structures and functions.
5. Discussion and documentation of proposals for annotating glycan functions that are independent of the carrier to which they are attached or are specific for the carrier and perhaps the site on the carrier to which they are attached (autonomous vs. non-autonomous functions).

To provide structure for the workshop, five general areas of glycan function have been chosen for framing discussions.  However, the organizers expect that the boundaries of these areas are porous; we will proceed as best we can to achieve the goals. We anticipate that a successful workshop will culminate in a shared-authorship manuscript which summarizes our deliberations for community consideration and comment.

Venue

Hilton Waikoloa Village

Queens Ballroom 4

Hilton Waikoloa Village

69-425 Waikoloa Beach Drive

Waikoloa, HI 96738

Floor plan with Queens 4 ballroom marked red.

Schedule

Time	Duration	Topic	Chair	Presenters	Reporters
9:00	10 min	Welcome		Mike Tiemeyer Rene Ranzinger
9:10	20 min	Glycan Function Overview		Mike Tiemeyer
9:30	60 min	Adhesion and non-immune cell-cell interactions 10 min introduction talk 10 min introduction talk 30 min open discussion 10 min session summary	Mike Tiemeyer	Lance Wells Ten Feizi	Rene Ranzinger Karina Martinez
10:30	15 min	Morning Coffee Break (in meeting room)
10:45	60 min	Modulation of immune and inflammatory responses 10 min introduction talk 10 min introduction talk 30 min open discussion 10 min session summary	Kiyoko Aoki-Kinoshita	Jim Paulson Rick Cummings	Rene Ranzinger Nathan Edwards
11:45	50 min	Lunch (Kona Promenade)
12:35	60 min	Modulation of signaling and protein function 10 min introduction talk 10 min introduction talk 30 min open discussion 10 min session summary	Nathan Edwards	Ron Schnaar Karin Hoffmeister	Rene Ranzinger Kiyoko Aoki-Kinoshita
1:35	60 min	Protein folding and quality control 10 min introduction talk 10 min introduction talk 30 min open discussion 10 min session summary	Lance Wells	Hamed Jafar-Nejad Nathan Edwards	Rene Ranzinger Mindy Porterfield
2:35	15 min	Coffee Break (in meeting room)
2:50	60 min	Other (structural, developmental, protection, probiotic, etc.) 10 min introduction talk 10 min introduction talk 30 min open discussion 10 min session summary	Marie Hollenhorst	Hans H. Wandall Shinobu Kitazume	Rene Ranzinger Mike Tiemeyer
3:50	10 min	Closing remarks		Mike Tiemeyer Rene Ranzinger
4:00		Meeting adjourned. Room is available till 5pm for open discussions.

• Chair - Facilitate discussion sessions
• Presenters - Give short ~10 minute presentation as introduction to a topic
• Reporters - Take notes

Travel information

Airport

Kona International Airport (KOA) is a 20-minute (19 miles) car ride from the hotel.

Uber & Lyft                           

Rides from Kona International Airport range from $21–$37.

Taxi                                        

Approx. $55-$65 (one way)

Parking             

Self-Parking: $39/night

Valet Parking: $55/night

Organization Committee

Dr. Mike Tiemeyer and Dr. René Ranzinger organizing and chairing the workshop. Other people that helped in planning the agenda and organizing the meeting are:

• Raja Mazumder (GlyGen)
• Karina Martinez (GlyGen)
• Anna Bighta (Complex Carbohydrate Research Center)

Contact

For questions about registration or general inquiries, please contact:

Mike Tiemeyer: mtiemeyer@ccrc.uga.edu

Rene Ranzinger: rene@ccrc.uga.edu

Acknowledgment

The workshop is supported by the GlyGen project and National Institute of General Medical Sciences under the grant # 1R24GM146616 - 01.

	Attendees	Resource/Project
1	Michael Tiemeyer	University of Georgia
2	Rene Ranzinger	University of Georgia
3	Karina Martinez	George Washington University
4	Hans H. Wandall	University of Copenhagen
5	Jim Paulson	Scripps Institute
6	Lance Wells	University of Georgia
7	Rick Cummings	Harvard Medical School
8	Ten Feizi	Imperial College London
9	Kelley Moremen	University of Georgia
10	Nathan Edwards	Georgetown University
11	Kiyoko Aoki-Kinoshita	Soka University
12	Hamed Jafar-Nejad	Baylor College of Medicine
13	Jeff Esko	University of California San Diego
14	Karin Hoffmeister	Versiti Blood Research Institute
15	Marie Hollenhorst	Harvard University
16	Shinobu Kitazume	Fukushima Medical University
17	Mindy Porterfield	University of Georgia
18	Jennifer Kohler	UT Southwestern Medical Center
19	Yukie Akune	Soka University
20	Ron Schnaar	The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
21	Sunmyoung Lee	Soka University
22	Jingyue Wu	George Washington University