Metabolic labeling of fucosylated glycans in developing zebrafish.

Many developmental processes depend on proper fucosylation, but this post-translational modification is difficult to monitor in vivo. Here we applied a chemical reporter strategy to visualize fucosylated glycans in developing zebrafish. Using azide-derivatized analogues of fucose, we metabolically labeled cell-surface glycans and then detected the incorporated azides via copper-free click chemistry with a difluorinated cyclooctyne probe.