Expression cloning of glycosyltransferases

Cloning of cDNAs encoding glycosyltransferases enters into a new era because of the advent of expression cloning for glycosyltransferases. This mini-review summarizes a short historical view on the development of this method and surveys various improvements over the original method. This review also emphasizes the advantages of those recently developed improvements with a brief description on their background. Finally, the review provides some prospects based on these developments in the methodology. It is expected that increasing numbers of newly cloned glycosyltransferases will become critical tools for understanding the roles of carbohydrates.