Cover Picture: Sialyl Lewisx: A “Pre-Organized Water Oligomer”? (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 29/2012)

Abstract

A surrogate for clustered water molecules attached to a scaffold is how the “pre-organized water oligomer” sialyl Lewisx can be described. The impetus for its binding to E-selectin is investigated by B. Ernst et al. in their Communication on page 7327 ff. Using isothermal titration calorimetry they show the key factors are the high degree of pre-organization allowing an array of directed hydrogen bonds, and the entropic benefit on releasing water molecules from the large binding interface.