KEY OLIGOSACCHARIDE OF CELL WALL PREPARED

Abstract

A COMPLEX OLIGOSACCHARIDE that makes up part of the cell wall of the tuberculosis-causing bacterium has been prepared by total synthesis. The work makes the cell-wall component—a lipomannan—available in pure form for studies of its role in the disease. It also demonstrates the growing practicality of a long-recognized way to accelerate carbohydrate synthesis by omitting some protection and deprotection steps. The work was carried out by carbohydrate chemist Bert Fraser-Reid and postdocs K.N. Jayaprakash and Jun Lu at the Natural Products & Glycotechnology Research Institute, a nonprofit organization with labs at North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus ( Angew. Chem. Int. Ed . 2005, 44 ,5894). The researchers created the lipomannan component from simple precursors by using donor-acceptor matching. This technique can eliminate many of the tedious protecting-group manipulations that make carbohydrate synthesis difficult and time-consuming. properties of material isolated from natural sources is...