The 1990s may well be remembered in biology as the decade of the
gene, culminating in the completion of the Human Genome
Project’s working draft. And the next big thing in medicine may
be the study of the proteins coded for by all those genes (see
“The Proteomics Payoff”). But even as doctors and drug companies
struggle to interpret and exploit the recent explosion of data
on genes and proteins, yet another field of biology is waiting
to break out: glycomics. This emerging discipline seeks to do
for sugars and carbohydrates what genomics and proteomics have
done for genes and proteins-move them into the mainstream of
biomedical research and drug discovery. For years, carbohydrates
were one of the least glamorous subjects in biochemistry
research. At best, scientists thought, these molecules created
structure (in the cell walls of plants, for example) or were
used to store energy (think potato); at worst, they hindered the
study of important biological molecules like DNA and proteins.
However, a very different