Sialic acids on T cells are crucial for their maintenance and survival

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Sialic acids are found as terminal sugars on glycan structures on cellular surfaces. T cells carry these sialoglycans abundantly, and they are thought to serve multiple functions in cell adhesion, cell migration, and protection from complement attack. We studied the role of sialoglycans on T cells in a mouse model with a T cell-specific deletion of cytidine monophosphate-sialic acid synthase (CMAS), the enzyme that is crucial for the synthesis of sialoglycans. These mice showed a T-cell deficiency in peripheral lymphoid organs. Many T cells with an undeleted