Direct Visualization of Live Zebrafish Glycan via Single-step Metabolic Labeling with Fluorophore-tagged Nucleotide Sugars

• DOI: 10.1101/548016
• Publication Date: 2019-02-13T06:17:20Z
• Authors: Senlian Hong; Pankaj Sahai-Hern...; David Traver; Peng Wu
• Keywords: Live cell imaging; Fucosylation; Bioorthogonal Chemistry; Nucleotide sugar

ABSTRACT Dynamic turnover of cell-surface glycans is involved in a myriad biological events, making this process an attractive target for vivo molecular imaging. The metabolic glycan labeling coupled with ‘bioorthogonal chemistry’ has paved the way visulizing living organisms. However, two-step sequence required, which prone to tissue penetration difficulties imaging probes. Here, by exploring substrate promiscuity endogenous glycosyltransferases, we developed single-step fluorescent strategy using fluorophore-tagged analogs nucleotide sugars directly. Injecting sialic acid and fucose into yolk zebrafish embryos at one-cell stage enables systematic sialylation fucosylation live various developmental stages. From these studies, obtained insights role sialylated fucosylated hematopoiesis.