Abstract
The introduction of chemical reporter groups into glycan structures through metabolic oligosaccharide engineering (MOE) followed by bio‐orthogonal ligation is an important tool to study glycosylation. We show the incorporation of synthetic galactose derivatives that bear terminal alkene groups in hepatic cells, with and without infection by Plasmodium berghei parasites, the causative agent of malaria. Additionally, we demonstrated the contribution of GLUT1 to the transport of these galactose derivatives, and observed a consistent increase in the uptake of these compounds going from naïve to P. berghei‐infected cells. Finally, we used MOE to study the interplay between Plasmodium parasites and their mosquito hosts, to reveal a possible transfer of galactose building blocks from the latter to the former. This strategy has the potential to provide new insights into Plasmodium glycobiology as well as for the identification and characterization of key glycan structures for further vaccine development.
Highlights
The introduction of chemical reporter groups in glycan structures through metabolic oligosaccharide engineering (MOE) followed by bio-orthogonal ligation is an important tool to study glycosylation
We decided to focus on the use of galactose, due to its apparent importance in the context of infection by Plasmodium parasites, the causative agents of malaria.[6]
We considered the importance of the α-Gal epitope for anti-malarial immunity and sought to understand whether a change in galactose-containing glycans was observed on hepatocytes after infection with the Plasmodium parasite.[8b]. We started by investigating the metabolic incorporation of the synthesized galactose derivatives into human hepatoma cells
Summary
The introduction of chemical reporter groups in glycan structures through metabolic oligosaccharide engineering (MOE) followed by bio-orthogonal ligation is an important tool to study glycosylation. We decided to use synthetic galactose derivatives in combination with MOE to investigate different stages of Plasmodium infection.[8a]
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