GLYDE-an expressive XML standard for the representation of glycan structure

The amount of glycomics data being generated is rapidly increasing as a result of improvements in analytical and computational methods. Correlation and analysis of this large, distributed data set requires an extensible and flexible representational standard that is also ‘understood’ by a wide range of software applications. An XML-based data representation standard that faithfully captures essential structural details of a glycan moiety along with additional information (such as data provenance) to aid the interpretation and usage of glycan data, will facilitate the exchange of glycomics data across the scientific community. To meet this need, we introduce GLYcan Data Exchange (GLYDE) standard as an XML-based representation format to enable interoperability and exchange of glycomics data. An online tool (http://128.192.9.86/stargate/formatIndex.jsp) for the conversion of other representations to GLYDE format has been developed.