Posted on 07/26/2013 11:03:21 PM PDT by neverdem
Method uses core carbohydrate to build variations of ubiquitous but enigmatic biomolecules
Scientists have demonstrated a new method for synthesizing glycans, a class of crucial but elusive carbohydrates. The technique opens the way to a comprehensive study of glycans, one of four key macromolecule groups in biology — along with proteins, nucleic acids and lipids — and the least studied of them. The results could also lead to a better understanding of the outer shells of viruses.
Glycans are made of sugar molecules, which can form simple chains or more elaborate, branching arrangements. They are ubiquitous in the living world. For instance, they form a major component of the outer membrane of all living cells. The human immune system recognizes glycans associated with specific pathogens, enabling it to respond to bacteria and viruses.
“Almost every major disease is linked to proteins and carbohydrates on the surface of cells,” says Geert-Jan Boons, a chemical biologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, who led the study, published today in Science1.
But these molecules have been difficult to isolate from cells or to produce in the laboratory, except for ones with symmetrical shapes, Boons says. He has calculated that as many as 85% of glycans in nature are asymmetrical.
Boons and his team have now developed a strategy to synthesize a broad family of glycans based on a simple carbohydrate similar to one found in eukaryotic cells. This starting material is modified to enable specific sites in the carbohydrate chain to be altered independently of other locations, so that, for example, one arm keeps growing and branching out while another one does not.
A similar, but less sophisticated, synthesis technique was reported in 2005 by Yukishige Ito, a synthetic chemist at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako, Japan, and his colleagues2...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Great. Nothing like have more ‘asymmetrical’ humans.
Why are asymmetrical shapes more difficult to isolate than the symmetrical shapes?
One of those too much pain to sleep nights, but never too much to think silly thoughts sometimes. Painkillers will do that, ya know?
Anyway:
Innerworld-Rise of the Glycans.
sorry.
They used the word “ubiquitous” twice. What losers.
Why don't reporters think to answer such 'why' questions or, if not known, at least tell us that no one knows why?
Don't they teach them the "who, what, when, where, why" rule? If they are trying to inform, we shouldn't have to do the work they were hired to do. I come away from many scientific articles with "why"?
That's a basic question, but this stuff, carbohydrate chemistry, is not simple.
"The latest strategy 'is practical as a powerful tool in glycobiology', he says, adding that Boons and his colleagues have demonstrated 'more convincingly' a strong candidate strategy for constructing a library of complex glycans."
Glycobiology and glycoscience are relatively new terms for describing how simple and complex sugars modify proteins. Getting the exact structure of various macromolecules is no mean feat. IMHO, the biggest payoffs could be in diagnostic tests in microbiology and immunology.
Glycoscience finally comes of age
These glycans can also form complexes with lipids. Lipopolysaccharide and innate immune system got 3293 citations at PubMed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Lipopolysaccharide+and+innate+immune+system
Thanks, neverdem.
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