npx skills add ...
npx skills add k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills --skill glycoengineering
Analyze and engineer protein glycosylation. Scan sequences for N-glycosylation sequons (N-X-S/T), predict O-glycosylation hotspots, and access curated glycoengineering tools (NetOGlyc, GlycoShield, GlycoWorkbench). For glycoprotein engineering, therapeutic antibody optimization, and vaccine design.
npx skills add k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills --skill glycoengineering
Glycosylation is the most common and complex post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins, affecting over 50% of all human proteins. Glycans regulate protein folding, stability, immune recognition, receptor interactions, and pharmacokinetics of therapeutic proteins. Glycoengineering involves rational modification of glycosylation patterns for improved therapeutic efficacy, stability, or immune evasion.
Two major glycosylation types:
Use this skill when:
N-glycosylation occurs at the sequon N-X-[S/T] where X ≠ Proline.
Web service for high-accuracy O-GalNAc site prediction:
GlycoSHIELD grafts libraries of pre-simulated glycan conformers onto a static protein structure and scores how much of the protein surface the glycans shield, without running new MD (Tsai et al., Cell 2024, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.034):
GlycoSHIELD is not on PyPI — uv pip install glycoshield fails. It ships as three scripts on top
of a small glycoshield package (needs numpy, scipy, matplotlib, MDAnalysis; GlycoSASA.py also needs
gmx from GROMACS on PATH). Install from the checkout:
Illustrative: the flags come from the scripts' argparse definitions and the upstream tutorial
(N-cadherin EC5 with Man5 glycans); they were not run here. --mode CG checks clashes against
Cα atoms only and pairs with --threshold 3.5; --mode All with --threshold 0.7 is the all-atom
setting.
| Goal | Strategy | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Enhance ADCC | Defucosylation at Fc Asn297 | Afucosylated IgG1 has ~50× better FcγRIIIa binding |
| Reduce immunogenicity | Remove non-human glycans | Eliminate α-Gal, NGNA epitopes |
| Improve PK half-life | Sialylation | Sialylated glycans extend half-life |
| Reduce inflammation | Hypersialylation | IVIG anti-inflammatory mechanism |
| Create glycan shield | Add N-glycosites to surface | Masks vulnerable epitopes (vaccine design) |
| Mutation | Effect |
|---|---|
| N297A/Q (IgG1) | Removes Fc glycosylation (aglycosyl) |
| N297D (IgG1) | Removes Fc glycosylation |
| S298A/E333A/K334A | Increases FcγRIIIa binding |
| F243L (IgG1) | Increases defucosylation |
| T299A | Removes Fc glycosylation |
| Symbol | Full Name | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Glc | Glucose | Hexose |
| GlcNAc | N-Acetylglucosamine | HexNAc |
| Man | Mannose | Hexose |
| Gal | Galactose | Hexose |
| Fuc | Fucose | Deoxyhexose |
| Neu5Ac | N-Acetylneuraminic acid (Sialic acid) | Sialic acid |
| GalNAc | N-Acetylgalactosamine | HexNAc |