Laboratório de Estudos Integrados em Bioquímica Microbiana, Instituto de Microbiologia Professor Paulo de Góes, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
Front Microbiol. 2011 Aug 15;2:171. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2011.00171. eCollection 2011.
Studies on structure and function of polysaccharides in biological systems classically involve sequence and compositional analyses, anomeric configuration, type of glycosidic linkage, and presence of substituents. Recent studies, however, indicates that other structural parameters, so far little explored, can directly influence the biological activity of microbial polysaccharides. Among these parameters, we highlight the molecular dimensions of Cryptococcus neoformans polysaccharides, which appear to be inversely correlated with their immunobiological activity. These recent observations raise new concepts about the structure and function of polysaccharides, which stimulates the design of new experimental approaches and suggests previously unknown applications.
在生物系统中,多糖的结构和功能研究通常涉及序列和组成分析、端基构型、糖苷键类型和取代基的存在。然而,最近的研究表明,其他结构参数,到目前为止很少被探索,可能会直接影响微生物多糖的生物活性。在这些参数中,我们重点介绍新型隐球菌多糖的分子尺寸,它似乎与其免疫生物学活性呈负相关。这些最近的观察结果提出了关于多糖结构和功能的新概念,这激发了新的实验方法的设计,并提出了以前未知的应用。