Functional Impact of Glycans and their Curation

There will be two glycan function events in Padua: an all-day workshop on Sunday Apr 23, and a 2-hour workshop on Monday Apr 24.

All Day Workshop (before Biocuration Conference)

Sunday April 23, 2023, 9:00am - 5:00pm

Hotel NH Padova, Padua, Italy

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-on-functional-impact-of-glycans-and-their-curation-tickets-489922931677

This event is separate from Biocuration 2023 and will be held prior to to the conference.

2-Hour Biocuration Workshop

Monday April 24, 2023, 11:00am - 1:00pm

Cultural Center Altinate San Gaetano, Padua, Italy

Registration: https://biocuration2023.github.io/

This event is hosted by the 2023 Biocuration Conference.

Abstract

Dynamic changes in protein glycosylation impact human health and disease progression. However, current resources that capture disease and phenotype information such as MIM, Monarch Initiative, UniProt, and Genomics England, and others focus primarily on the macromolecules within the central dogma of molecular biology (DNA, RNA, proteins). In order to gain a more complete understanding of human disease, there is a need to capture the functional impact of glycans and glycosylation on biological processes. While the aforementioned resources include glycan-related genes, such as biosynthetic and degradative enzymes, the function and disease annotations are usually associated with the gene product rather than with the relevant glycosylation and glycan structural changes. Expression of glycan-related genes represents only a subset of factors affecting protein glycosylation. The functional impact of a specific glycan structure may depend on the protein to which it is bound, site of attachment, truncation or loss of the entire glycan structure. A catalog of glycosylation combinations, their relationship with other biomolecules, and their functional implications will provide insight into the biological roles of glycans and the impact of genetic and environmental factors on their expression. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together subject matter experts, tool developers and biocurators from resources that annotate content that is related to the functional impact of glycans. Each resource will do a short presentation on their data of interest, including  types of annotations, what impact glycan function might have on these annotations, and standards and ontologies they are using. This will be followed by a jamboree/hackathon where we will discuss selected publications to identify commonalities and gaps in our current curation practices, and provide potential solutions. The attendees will help identify areas where curators, data wranglers, and text mining experts can collaborate to address gaps in glycan and glycosylation annotations, leverage each other’s work to improve their respective resources and encourage data sharing amongst resources.

Organization Committee

Raja Mazumder (GlySpace, GlyGen), Mike Tiemeyer (GlySpace, GlyGen), Rene Ranzinger (GlyGen), Maria Martin (UniProt, GlyGen), Kiyoko Aoki-Kinoshita (GlySpace, GlyCosmos, GlyTouCan), Frederique Lisacek (GlySpace, GlyConnect), Cecilia Arighi (PIR, BioCreative, UniProt), Randi Vita (IEDB), Jeet Vora (GlyGen), Karina Martinez (GlyGen)

All Day Workshop (Sunday April 23)

GlyGen and the Society for Glycobiology are sponsoring a special workshop held prior to the 2023 International Biocuration Conference in Padua, Italy. The purpose of this workshop is to focus on community building and learning what each resource is doing related to the functional impact of glycans.

Venue

Hotel NH Padova, Via Niccolò Tommaseo, 61, 35131 Padova, Italy

https://www.nh-hotels.com/hotel/nh-padova

16 minute walking time to Centro Culturale San Gaetano (Conference venue)

Cost

Free, with lunch and coffee provided. Travel and accommodation are not included.

Accommodations

You can book a room at Hotel NH Padova from Saturday, April 22nd onwards. Additional lodging suggestions can be found on the 2023 Biocuration Conference website here.

Tenative Schedule

Morning session (9am - 12:30pm)

• Introductions
• Brief intro to glycobiology (~15 minutes)
• Presentations (~5 minutes/group)
• Discussion

Lunch (12:30 - 1:30pm)

Afternoon session (1:30pm - 5pm)

• Discussion
• Coffee break (15 minutes)
• Prepare action plans/presentation/recommendations to curate glycomics data to be presented during Monday Biocuration workshop
  

Presentations

Each resource will do a short presentation on their data of interest, including types of annotations, what impact glycan function might have on these annotations, and standards and ontologies they are using. The goal of these presentations is to improve coordination amongst resources to capture and harmonize glycan and glycosylation related data.

Questions that can be addressed in the presentations:

1. How would your resource extract glycan-related data from literature or other sources?
2. What type of glycan-related data would be useful to your resource–that you don’t currently have access to?
3. What type of data–that you do have–might enhance glycan-related data?
4. What standards does your resource use for the glycan-related annotations?

Registered Attendees (Resource/Project)

Raja Mazumder (GlyGen), Mike Tiemeyer (GlyGen), Rene Ranzinger (GlyGen), Karina Martinez (GlyGen), Maria Martin (UniProt), Cecilia Arighi (UniProt/BioCreative), Kiyoko Aoki-Kinoshita (GlyCosmos), Frederique Lisacek (glyco@Expasy), Randi Vita (Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Project), Susan Bello (Mouse Genome Informatics), Vijay Shanker (University of Delaware), Kalpana Panneerselvam (IntAct), Nathan Edwards (GlycoMotif/GlyGen Glycan Sandbox), Ten Feizi (Glycan microarray data curation), Callum Ives (GlycoShape-3D), Jon Agirre (University of York), Hiren Joshi (GlycoDomainViewer), Ted Groth (GlycoEnzOnto), Yan Liu (Glycan Microarray Facility, software tools and database), Paul Thomas (Gene Ontology, PANTHER), Kristian Axelsen (SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics), Deepti Kundu (EMBL-EBI)

2-Hour Biocuration Workshop (Monday April 24)

Biocuration 2023 will be hosting 5 workshops, including Functional impact of glycans and their curation, at the main conference venue. For additional information, visit the Biocuration website here: https://biocuration2023.github.io/workshops#glycans

Contact

For questions about registration or general inquiries, please contact:
Raja Mazumder: mazumder@gwu.edu
Karina Martinez: karinamartinez@gwu.edu
Jeet Vora: jeetvora@gwu.edu