Understanding glycomechanics using mathematical modeling: a review of current approaches to simulate cellular glycosylation reaction networks.

Following the footsteps of genomics and proteomics, recent years have witnessed the growth of large-scale experimental methods in the field of glycomics. In parallel, there has also been growing interest in developing Systems Biology based methods to study the glycome. The combined goals of these endeavors is to identify glycosylation-dependent mechanisms regulating human physiology, check points that can control the progression of pathophysiology, and modifications to reaction pathways that can result in more uniform biopharmaceutical processes. In these efforts, mathematical models of N- and O-linked glycosylation have emerged as paradigms for the field. While these are relatively few in number, nevertheless, the existing models provide a basic framework that can be used to develop more sophisticated analysis strategies for glycosylation in the future. The current review surveys these computational models with focus on the underlying mathematics and assumptions, and with respect to their ability to generate experimentally testable hypotheses.