Glyco get-together exploring health and disease

Experts from around the world will gather in July for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s upcoming meeting on the posttranslational modification O-GlcNAcylation, or O-GlcNAc, in health and disease. O-GlcNAc involves the addition of a specific sugar molecule, N-acetylglucosamine, to the side chains of amino acids serine or threonine on proteins and plays a role in signaling, transcription and translation, metabolism and more. The conference will be held July 10–13, 2025, in Durham, North Carolina.

ASBMB’s meeting on O-GlcNAcylation will be held in Durham, North Carolina.

Despite 40 years of research and over 15,000 substrates described to date, scientists still do not completely understand O-GlcNAcylation. Recent breakthroughs identifying the specific functions of O-GlcNAc substrates and their connections to many diseases give this topic important implications for physiology and disease.

Graduate and postdoctoral students will be selected for oral talks and have opportunities to discuss their work at poster sessions.

ASBMB Today talked to organizers Michael Boyce, associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Duke University, and Stephanie Olivier–Van Stichelen, an associate professor of biochemistry at the Medical College of Wisconsin. According to the co-chairs, if you want to learn about O-GlcNAc, have just started working on this modification, want to find a collaborator for your next project or learn the latest discovery in the field, this meeting is for you.

The interview has been edited for length, clarity and style.

Michael Boyce

Introduce yourself and tell me about how you got interested in O-GlcNAc and organizing this conference.

Boyce: My lab studies a couple of different aspects of glycobiology, but a major interest has always been O-GlcNAc, the subject of this meeting. One thing I appreciate about the glycobiology and O-GlcNAc community is that people are collegial, interactive and collaborative. There was a great first version of this meeting in 2022. I gave a talk there, saw a lot of folks, learned a lot about the field and, based on that experience, was really happy to be one of the organizers for the next version.

Van Stichelen: I've been working on O-GlcNAc since my Ph.D. I did my postdoc in an O-GlcNAc lab, and I started my lab as an O-GlcNAc lab. My lab currently focuses on O-GlcNAc in early life — specifically during gestation, pregnancy, and placental development — and its relationship to nutrition. The O-GlcNAccommunity is awesome, so we're really happy to have them on the same campus once every other year now.

What can attendees look forward to at the meeting?

Stephanie Olivier–Van Stichelen

Van Stichelen: We're going to have different speakers, primarily people who have been really active over the past five years. We've tried to cover every new O-GlcNAc story with invited speakers. On top of this, we are bringing in some OGT-XLID patient families to share their experiences. So, we're going to have a human disease-focused aspect of the meeting. I think that's going to be a great translational aspect of the meeting. We hope to see lots of new faces and hopefully many students coming in to present their research.

Boyce: Within the last five to seven years, researchers discovered that mutations in OGT, the enzyme that adds O-GlcNAc, cause a variety of X-linked intellectual disability. So, there's a growing patient community of folks who have this disease and their families. They're diagnosed as children, and the parents are organizing a group to marshal resources for research and potential clinical trials. We're really excited to have some representatives of that attending to be able to interface with the researchers. I think that's an important perspective you don't always get at a conference.

Who should attend this meeting?

Boyce: This is a great meeting both for people who are already in the field, who want to catch up with colleagues and hear the latest of what's going on, and people who are coming to the field from a different angle or a different perspective. Often, I'll hear, ‘We discovered that my favorite protein is glycosylated. I don't even know what that means, but we're interested in it.’ This meeting is perfect for those kinds of people because the community is welcoming. A newcomer can interact with potential collaborators or advisors on their work. We definitely welcome people who are brand new to the field.

What hot topics in the field will be covered at the meeting?

Van Stichelen: I think OGT–X-linked intellectual disability, or OGT–XLID, is definitely the hottest topic in the field right now. This is mostly based on the patient family involvement driving the effort for research in that direction, in a basic science field, which is pretty unique.

Boyce: We're also expecting talks on cancer biology and neurodegeneration. There's a lot of interest in the role of O-GlcNAc signaling and common neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

We're very excited to see what abstracts come in. We're open to being surprised and hearing about cool new projects, maybe from labs that are new to O-GlcNAc. We’d like to give those folks a platform to give talks and bring new perspectives to the field.

How’s it been working together to make this meeting happen?

Van Stichelen: We balance each other out when trying to raise sponsorships and find speakers, so that’s been great. We work really well together.

Boyce: I think we have aligned values and goals, but also different styles, backgrounds networks that we can draw on. So that's been really nice because it adds to the success of the meeting.

Organizing a conference like this is very feasible, even if you don't have experience because the partnership with the society makes it possible.

The early registration and oral abstract deadlines are May 12. Register today!