As one of the major biomacromolecules, glycans mediate various important physiological and pathological processes. On the other hand, glycans are highly complex and heterogeneous. As a result, unlike nucleic acids and proteins, powerful tools for analyzing and profiling glycosylation are relatively lacking. To address these challenges, chemistry and biology has been integrated to enable probing, understanding, and manipulating glycans in ways not possible before. For examples, metabolic glycan labeling based on bioorthogonal chemistry and click chemistry has emerged as a central tool for glycan imaging and glycoproteomic profiling in live cells and living animals. Our group has developed several chemical tools to elucidate the biological function of glycosylation, with an emphasis on in vivo labeling, visualization, and profiling of glycosylation dynamics. We are particularly interested in how glycosylation regulates the physiology and pathology in the brain and in the cardiovascular system. In this talk, I will introduce some of the recent progresses in this direction.

Dr. Xing Chen is currently Changjiang distinguished Professor and Dean of the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University. He completed his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Tsinghua University in 2002 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from University of California, Berkeley in 2007, under the guidance of Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi and Prof. Alex Zettl.  He then joined the laboratory of Prof. Timothy Springer at Harvard Medical School as a LSRF postdoctoral fellow, where his research focused on structural immunology.  Dr. Chen started as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Peking University in 2010 and was promoted directly to Full Professor with tenure in 2016.  He is also affiliated with Center for Life Science (CLS) and Synthetic and Functional Biomolecule Center (SFBC) of Peking University. Some of his recent awards include Zhang Shuzheng Award for Outstanding Achievements in Glycoscience (2021), ACS Horace S. Isbell Award (2021), Xplore Prize (2010), Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award (2020), CCS-RSC Young Chemist Award (2018), and ACS David Y. Gin New Investigator Award (2016). His current research interest focuses on chemical glycobiology.