Application of Sucrose Synthase in the Synthesis of Nucleotide Sugars and Saccharides

The realization that the oligosaccharide moieties of glycoconjugates, such as glycoproteins and glycolipids, are involved in important intra- and intercellular of important oligosaccharide structures as tools in analytical and therapeutic studies (see refs. 1 and 2 for reviews). A number of efficient chemical procedures have been developed for the synthesis of the “glyco-” part (see refs. 3 –7 for review). However, for the synthesis of a given saccharide structure, an individual strategy has to be set up comprising many laborious protection and deprotection steps for stereo-controlled synthesis, which finally results in only moderate overall yields. As an example, the synthesis of N -acetyllactosamine (LacNAc) involves 12 steps and needs 3 months of lab work (7 ). A scale-up of the chemical procedure often encounters environmental problems because all steps are carried out in organic solvents.