Description
Unlike amino acids and nucleic acids, carbohydrates have been disregarded for a longer time by the scientific community. The situation meanwhile changed with increasing knowledge about carbohydrates and glycoconjugates and the key roles they play in biological processes such as recognition, signal transduction, immune responses, and others. Furthermore, many diseases are based on dysfunctions of carbohydrate modifying enzymes and several carbohydrate-based pharmaceuticals have been developed in the recent past against diseases like malaria, cancer, various storage diseases, to name only some. Another important aspect, particularly against the background of depletion of fossil energy – above all oil – is the use of renewable raw materials, not only for future energy supply but also for the synthesis of chemicals that to date is still oil-based to more than 70 per cent. Here, carbohydrate-modifying biocatalysts, enzymes as well as microorganisms, will contribute significantly to the development of environmentally friendly production processes. Apart from an introduction into basic carbohydrate chemistry and a survey on glycoconjugates, main topics of the book are among others: Oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates in recognition processes; carbohydrate modifying enzymes (glycosidases, glycosyltransferases, phosphorylases, sulfotransferases, sulfatases); various strategies – enzymatic and chemo-enzymatic ones – for the synthesis of tailor-made oligosaccharides and sugar derivatives; carbohydrate-modifying enzymes for unusual sugar biosynthesis; sialic acid analogues and sialylmimetics; enzymatic and microbial degradation of biopolymers; design of efficient multi-enzymatic reactions for biomass processing; and, application of metabolic pathway engineering.
