A pioneering activist and journalist, Steinem was one of the women’s liberation movement’s most outspoken advocates.

A nanopore-based ‘chop and measure’ method sequences peptides at single-amino-acid resolution by using enzymatic digestion to progressively shorten the N terminus one residue at a time,...

Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.

Multiplexed super-resolution microscopy of DNA-barcoded lectins and metabolically incorporated unnatural sugars quantitatively links the nanoscale spatial relationships of glycocalyx organization and ...

Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 14 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41565-026-02154-9Glycan atlassing is a method for the detection of the spatial organization of cell-surface glycosylation patterns at nanoscale. It shows that such patterns reflect the functional state of the cell, providing direct evidence that the cell-surface glycome encodes biological information via its spatial organization.

Nature - Super-resolution technique works with off-the-shelf optical microscopes.

By combining bioorthogonal metabolic labelling and resolution enhancement through sequential imaging of DNA barcodes, the molecular organization of individual sugars in the native glycocalyx has been ...

By combining bioorthogonal metabolic labelling and resolution enhancement through sequential imaging of DNA barcodes, the molecular organization of individual sugars in the native glycocalyx has been ...

The glycocalyx is a complex layer of glycosylated biomolecules surrounding all cells in the human body. It is involved in the regulation of critical cellular processes such as immune response modulation, cell adhesion, and host-pathogen interactions. Despite these insights, the functional relationship between glycocalyx architecture and cellular state has remained elusive so far, mainly attributable to the structural diversity of glycocalyx constituents and their nanoscale organization. Here, we show that DNA-tagged lectin labeling and metabolic oligosaccharide engineering enables multiplexed super-resolution microscopy of glycocalyx constituents, yielding an atlas of glycocalyx architecture with nanometer resolution. Quantitative analysis of the obtained nanoscale map of glycocalyx constituents facilitates the extraction of characteristic spatial relationships that accurately report on cellular state. We demonstrate the capacity of our approach, which we term Glycan Atlassing, across cell and tissue types, ranging from cultured cell lines to primary immune cells, neurons, and primary patient tissue. Glycan Atlassing establishes a powerful strategy for investigating glycocalyx remodeling in development and disease, potentially enabling the development of new glycocalyx-centered targets in diagnosis and therapy. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Else Kröner-Fresenius-StiftungElse Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung, https://ror.org/03zcxha54, 2020_EKEA.91 Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, https://ror.org/018mejw64, 529257351, 460333672, 270949263 Wilhelm Sander StiftungWilhelm Sander Stiftung, https://ror.org/02q83sc19, 2023.025.1 European Research CouncilEuropean Research Council, , 101118729 Alexander von Humboldt FoundationAlexander von Humboldt Foundation, https://ror.org/012kf4317,

Glycobiology is rooted in the study of monosaccharides, Angstrom-sized molecules that are the building blocks of intricate glycosylation patterns. Glycosylated biomolecules form the glycocalyx, a dens...