A mechanistic study of enantiomeric separation with vancomycin and balhimycin as chiral selectors by capillary electrophoresis. Dimerization and enantioselectivity.

The role of the sugar moiety of glycopeptide antibiotics in chiral recognition was investigated with capillary electrophoresis. Two glycopeptide antibiotics, vancomycin and balhimycin, were employed as models since they possess the same aglycon and almost identical sugar moieties, however, with different attachment sites to the aglycon. The observed enantioselectivity of balhimycin for dansylated alpha-amino acids is 2.6 times higher than that of vancomycin. Blocking of the sugar amino group of balhimycin by N-carbamoylation reaction with KOCN led to a significantly decreased enantioselectivity compared to vancomycin, which remained almost the same upon carbamoylation. These results suggest a major role of the amino sugar together with its site of attachment to the aglycon. A dimerization-based mechanism is proposed to explain this phenomenon due to the fact that the dimerization properties of glycopeptides are similarly related to their glycosylation patterns; e.g., the dimerization constant of balhimycin is 78 times higher than that of vancomycin. Furthermore, the dimerization of glycopeptides promotes their affinity to carboxyl-containing ligands via cooperativity effects between the dimerization and the formation of glycopeptide-ligand complexes. The higher dimer stability probably leads to a more favorable conformation for chiral recognition. Thus, it is concluded that a weakened dimerization of N-carbamoylated balhimycin results in a decreased enantioselectivity.