Exploring specificity of glycosyltransferases: synthesis of new sugar nucleotide related molecules as putative donor substrates Original Research Article

We investigated the specificity of glycosyltransferases toward donor substrates in two complementary directions. First we prepared simple N-acetyl-α-d-glucosamine 1-diphosphates: methyl-(2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-glucopyranosyl)-diphosphate, benzyl-(2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-glucopyranosyl)-diphosphate, 4-phenylbutyl-(2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-glucopyranosyl)-diphosphate, by the coupling of the corresponding activated alkyl phosphates with N-acetyl-α-d-glucosamine 1-phosphate. These diphosphates as well as 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-glucopyranose 1-diphosphate, tested as donors of N-acetylglucosamine in a reaction catalyzed by Neisseria meningitidis N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (LgtA), proved to be devoid of activity. Evaluated as inhibitors, only 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-glucopyranose 1-diphosphate showed some inhibitory activity with an IC50 value of 7 mM.