In the 1980s, Jeffrey Esko was the first to isolate and characterize animal cell mutants altered in the assembly of heparan sulfate. Many of these enzymes have now been purified, molecularly cloned and their expression patterns studied. From this and early work on the fundamental stages of HS/heparin biosynthesis using a mouse mastocytoma cell free system a lot is known about the order of enzyme reactions and specificity.
