McKitrick, T. R. et al. Commun. Biol. 3, 91 (2020).

Glycans play a crucial role in a variety of biological processes, yet their high structural diversity makes biological studies on glycan expression very difficult. A fundamental bottleneck is lack of reliable reagents that bind in a highly specific, structure-dependent manner. McKitrick et al. have developed a platform based on the unusual immune system of the sea lamprey to identify such reagents. Upon exposure to immunogens, these organisms secrete circulating antigen-specific variable lymphocyte receptor B (VLRB) antibodies, which have similar combinatorial diversity to that of the human antibody repertoire. Diverse sets of glycan immunogens were used to generate VLRBs, and the expressed VLRBs were screened for specificity using a microarray consisting of ~600 unique glycan structures. The characterized VLRBs with unique glycan specificity are termed smart anti-glycan reagents (SAGRs). The authors report 15 SAGRs that can discriminate among linkages, functional groups and unique glycan motifs.