Metabolic Incorporation of Stable Isotope Labels into Glycans

In this note, an in vivo labeling strategy for glycomic studies is described, analogous to the SILAC approach used for proteomics. This glycomic methodology is called IDAWG – isotopic detection of aminosugars with glutamine – and is based on the side-chain of glutamine being the sole nitrogen donor source in the biosynthesis of aminosugar nucleotides.