The Functional Glycomics Gateway is a comprehensive and free online resource that is the result of a collaboration between the Consortium for Functional Glycomics (CFG) and Nature Publishing Group. It is aimed at keeping you abreast of developments in the emerging field of functional glycomics. Central to the collaboration are the Functional Glycomics Updates, CFG resources, CFG data and CFG databases. The Gateway has been designed to highlight new and important contributions to the field from outside and within the CFG and to merge this information into a comprehensive Functional Glycomics resource.

The Functional Glycomics Update provides a one-stop overview of the latest research in glycobiology for specialists and non-specialists alike. It is updated monthly to bring you the latest news and selected highlights from Nature journals. In addition, it will provide two featured articles a month on the most relevant advances in the field published in NPG and other top journals. By collating new articles into a key worded research library, we hope to provide a continuously updated and broad overview of the field. You can register here to receive an email table of contents for the Functional Glycomics Update, or an RSS feed.

The Gateway serves as a portal to the CFG program, which includes data that are being produced by the CFG's scientific Core laboratories, specialty databases for glycan-binding proteins, glycan structures, and glycosyltransferases, and information about resources and services the CFG offers to the scientific community.

The CFG is a large international research initiative funded by NIGMS to elucidate the roles of carbohydrate-protein interactions in cell communication at the cell surface. The strategy for achieving this goal is to work with the scientific community to provide Participating Investigators with unique resources and services they can utilize to speed their own research. Glycans and reagents, glyco-gene microarray analysis, novel knockout mouse strains, glycan microarray analysis, glycan analysis, mouse phenotyping and web-based databases have been developed for these purposes.

Data produced by the Scientific Cores are uploaded into the CFG relational database. This database, developed and maintained by the CFG's Bioinformatics Core, is the primary tool for integrating and disseminating data to investigators and the scientific community. Specialty databases for glycan-binding proteins, glycan structures, and glycosyltransferases provide an independent way of accessing CFG data, as well as integrating a large amount of publicly-available information. They are key to developing a bioinformatics resource that integrates the diverse types of data being generated and an important step towards an integrated systems biology approach to glycobiology.

The largest component of the CFG is its Participating Investigators, each of whom is carrying out research within the scope of the CFG's goals. Participating Investigators who use CFG resources in their own research programs are publishing their findings in scientific articles and reviews. Requests from Participating Investigators for resources and services, and subsequent publications resulting from those resources, have increased substantially each year. The cumulative research of Participating Investigators and data produced with CFG resources are the driving forces that will allow the CFG to achieve its goals.

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is the scientific publishing arm of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, combining the excellence of Nature, Nature Cell Biology and other Nature Research Journals, Nature Reviews, NPG Academic Journals and NPG Reference publications, to provide a premier information resource for the basic and applied biological and physical sciences.

The Editors at Nature Publishing Group appreciate the central importance of functional glycomics research to molecular and cell biology, as well as therapeutic development. This project builds on a very strong publication record in this area and further cements our links with the glycobiology community.

NPG is a global company, with headquarters in London and offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich and Basingstoke.

If you have any editorial queries regarding the Functional Glycomics Update, or have suggestions for content, or conferences that you would like to be included in the Conference Calendar, please contact the editor, Emma Leah on e-mail at: functionalglycomics@nature.com or by post at:

Emma Leah
Functional Glycomics Gateway Editorial Office
The Macmillan Building
4 Crinan Street
London N1 9XW

If you are interested in contacting the Consortium for Functional Glycomics, please e-mail: CFGadmin@scripps.edu or write to:

Dr. James C. Paulson
Consortium for Functional Glycomics
The Scripps Research Institute
10555 N. Torrey Pines Road, MEM-L71
La Jolla, CA 92037-1027 USA

If you are having problems with the website, or with your email registration, or if you have any technical queries about the Functional Glycomics Gateway, please e-mail: registration@nature.com