Abstract
Keratan sulfate (KS) is one of the glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), a family of polysaccharides consisting of repeats of disaccharide units. KS covalently attaches to scaffold core proteins to yield keratan sulfate proteoglycans (KSPGs). Because KSPGs were originally identified in corneal extracts and later shown to be prevalent in cartilage, most research efforts have been focused on their structures and biological functions in these tissues. In the 1980s, KSPGs were found in the central nervous system (CNS), and thus its significance in neuronal development and certain pathological conditions has also been explored. Recent data provide several lines of evidence that KSPG is involved in both physiological and post-injury neuronal plasticity.
