Glycomics

Glycomics: Glycomics is a broad and emerging scientific discipline focused on defining the structures and functional roles of glycans in biological systems. The staggering complexity of the glycome, minimally defined as the repertoire of glycans expressed in a cell or organism, has resulted in many challenges that must be overcome; these are being addressed by new advances in mass spectrometry, as well as expansion of genetic and cell biology studies. Overall, glycomics "is the systematic study of all glycan structures of a given cell type or organism" and is a subset of glycobiology.