A simple chemical synthesis of sugar nucleoside diphosphates in water.

ABSTRACT

Chemoenzymatic oligosaccharide synthesis is attractive since it eliminates the tedious multistep protection-deprotection requirements of pure chemical synthesis. Chemoenzymatic synthesis using glycosyltransferases, however, requires not only the correct enzyme to control both regio- and stereospecificity, but also the glycosyl donor to provide the sugar that is added. This unit describes a simple synthesis of sugar-nucleoside diphosphates (sugar-NDPs), the type of glycosyl donor (e.g., UDP-Glc, UDP-Gal, ADP-Glc) required by most glycosyltransferases, by using a chemical coupling reaction in water. The preparation of sugar-NDPs by this method therefore does not require any skills in synthetic organic chemistry.