In this week’s episode I’m talking about blood types, and a technique that could be used to develop universal blood:

<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_46" style="width: 1600px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-46">Here’s a good visual representation of the red blood cells of different ABO blood types, and the antibodies present in plasma associated with these types.</figcaption></figure>

<figure class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_47" style="width: 2000px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-47">This image allows you to visualize the sugar structures on the different blood type red blood cells. Each hexagon represents a different sugar type. Note how to A, B, and AB red blood cells have additional sugars that the O red blood cells do not. These are the desired targets of the enzymes. </figcaption></figure>

As promised here’s the link to the abstract I discuss:

Discovery of CAZYmes for cell surface glycan removal through metagenomics: Towards universal blood

And here is an additional paper by the same group:

oward Efficient Enzymes for the Generation of Universal Blood through Structure-Guided Directed Evolution