A group from Soka University etc. has reported on changes in glycan modification accompanied by change from ESC to epiblast-like cells (EpiLCs) and a control factor behind them.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79666-4
With the change from ESC to EpiLCs, the following changes in glycan modification occur:
- For N-type glycans, the high mannose structure is the main structure in common, but in EpiLCs, fucose modification, bisecting, and Sia modification are increased, for Sia, α2-6 is the main linkage, and typeI LacNAc (Galβ1-3GlcNAc) is highly expressed with α1-2Fuc modified.
- For O-type sugar chains, Tn antigen and O-GlcNAc are the main in common, but in EpiLCs, the expression of O-glycan is generally increasing, and elongated mucin type O-glycans also increase.
- For Glycosaminoglycans (GAG), EpiLCs generally increase GAG expression, especially Heparan sulfate (HS), chondroitin sulfate (CS) and dermatan sulfate (DS).
- For glycolipids, EpiLCs cause structural changes from globo (Gb) to ganglio (Gg).
Behind these glycan modification, polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), a chromatin protein, was shown to be involved as a regulator. A number of glycosyltransferase genes involved in glycan modification of ESC is under the control of PRC2.