Human/Mouse/Rat ST3 beta-Gal alpha-2,3-Sialyltransferase 2/ST3GAL2 Antibody

Sialyltransferases add sialic acid to glycoproteins or glycosphingolipids and play important roles in many biological processes including immune recognition, pathogen infection, and cell adhesion (1). Similar to ST3GAL1 (2), ST3GAL2 is a type II membrane protein localized in the trans-Golgi network that can transfer sialic acid to the Gal beta1-3GalNAc structure to form NeuAc alpha2-3Gal beta1-3GalNAc found in terminal carbohydrate groups of particular glycoproteins, oligosaccharides and glycolipids (3). Unlike the ubiquitously expressed ST3GAL1 (4), ST3GAL2 is mainly expressed in heart, liver, skeletal muscle and various lymphoid tissues but not in brain and kidney (3). ST3GAL2 is responsible for the synthesis of monosialosyl globopentaosylceramide (MSGb5), also known as stage-specific embryonic antigen-4 (SSEA4) (5), a cell surface marker for testicular germ cell carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, and mesenchymal stem cells (6). The enzymatic activity of recombinant human ST3GAL2 was determined using a phosphatase-coupled glycosyltransferase assay (7). Over aa 52-350 human ST3GAL2 share 94% aa sequence identity with mouse and rat.