Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bowdoin College, 6600 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011, USA.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bowdoin College, 6600 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011, USA.
Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2024 Jun;80:102453. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2024.102453. Epub 2024 Apr 5.
Bacterial cells are covered by a complex carbohydrate coat of armor that allows bacteria to thrive in a range of environments. As a testament to the importance of bacterial glycans, effective and heavily utilized antibiotics including penicillin and vancomycin target and disrupt the bacterial glycocalyx. Despite their importance, the study of bacterial glycans lags far behind their eukaryotic counterparts. Bacterial cells use a large palette of monosaccharides to craft glycans, leading to molecules that are significantly more complex than eukaryotic glycans and that are refractory to study. Fortunately, chemical tools designed to probe bacterial glycans have yielded insights into these molecules, their structures, their biosynthesis, and their functions.
细菌细胞被一层复杂的碳水化合物盔甲所覆盖，这使得细菌能够在多种环境中生存。作为细菌糖的重要性的证明，有效的、大量使用的抗生素，包括青霉素和万古霉素，靶向并破坏细菌糖萼。尽管它们很重要，但细菌糖的研究远远落后于真核生物糖。细菌细胞使用大量的单糖来合成聚糖，导致这些分子比真核聚糖复杂得多，而且难以研究。幸运的是，设计用于探测细菌糖的化学工具已经为这些分子的结构、生物合成和功能提供了一些见解。
