Designing sugar mimetics: non-natural pyranosides as innovative chemical tools.

Designing sugar mimetics: non-natural pyranosides as innovative chemical tools. Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2016 Sep 9;34:127-134 Authors: Saliba RC, Pohl NL Abstract The importance of oligosaccharides in myriad biological processes is becoming increasingly clear. However, these carbohydrate-mediated processes are often challenging to dissect due to the often poor affinity, stability and selectivity of the oligosaccharides involved. To circumvent these issues, non-natural carbohydrates-carbohydrate mimics-are being designed as innovative tools to modify biomolecules of interest or to understand biological pathways using fluorescence microscopy, X-ray or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). This review focuses on key examples of recently developed non-natural sugars to answer specific biological needs. PMID: 27621102 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Current Opinion in Chemical Biology - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: Curr Opin Chem Biol Source Type: research