Chemical Biology of Glycoproteins
CHAPTER 6: Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of N-Glycans
-
Published:20 Mar 2017
-
Special Collection: 2017 ebook collectionSeries: Chemical Biology
Xuefeng Cao, Jun Zhou, Yuxi Guo, Yunpeng Liu, Lei Li, Peng George Wang, 2017. "Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of N-Glycans", Chemical Biology of Glycoproteins, Zhongping Tan, Lai-Xi Wang
Download citation file:
A major post-translational modification of proteins on cell surfaces is asparagine N-linked glycosylation, which plays critical roles in various biological processes. Over the past decade, efficient strategies for the synthesis of N-glycans have become increasingly attractive because it is highly desired to obtain structurally defined N-glycans in sufficient amounts for structure–function studies. In this respect, chemical synthesis of N-glycans has been well developed and has become the most frequently used approach to generate well-defined N-glycans. However, when synthetic targets are complicated N-glycans and especially N-glycan libraries, the chemical approach still remains challenging, tedious, and time-consuming. More recently, a facile and practical strategy, core synthesis/enzymatic extension (CSEE), has been developed for efficient synthesis of N-glycan libraries with structural diversities, wherein an N-glycan core is first chemically synthesized and further elongated by glycosyltransferases (GTs) to rapidly produce a large number of complex N-glycans. Herein, we provide a concise summary of most recent advances in chemical and chemoenzymatic synthesis of N-glycans.