Issue 2, 2023

Metabolic glycoengineering – exploring glycosylation with bioorthogonal chemistry

Abstract

Glycans are involved in numerous biological recognition events. Being secondary gene products, their labeling by genetic methods – comparable to GFP labeling of proteins – is not possible. To overcome this limitation, metabolic glycoengineering (MGE, also known as metabolic oligosaccharide engineering, MOE) has been developed. In this approach, cells or organisms are treated with synthetic carbohydrate derivatives that are modified with a chemical reporter group. In the cytosol, the compounds are metabolized and incorporated into newly synthesized glycoconjugates. Subsequently, the reporter groups can be further derivatized in a bioorthogonal ligation reaction. In this way, glycans can be visualized or isolated. Furthermore, diverse targeting strategies have been developed to direct drugs, nanoparticles, or whole cells to a desired location. This review summarizes research in the field of MGE carried out in recent years. After an introduction to the bioorthogonal ligation reactions that have been used in in connection with MGE, an overview on carbohydrate derivatives for MGE is given. The last part of the review focuses on the many applications of MGE starting from mammalian cells to experiments with animals and other organisms.

Graphical abstract: Metabolic glycoengineering – exploring glycosylation with bioorthogonal chemistry

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
06 ሴፕቴ 2022
First published
20 ዲሴም 2022

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2023,52, 510-535

Metabolic glycoengineering – exploring glycosylation with bioorthogonal chemistry

M. Kufleitner, L. M. Haiber and V. Wittmann, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2023, 52, 510 DOI: 10.1039/D2CS00764A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements