The Flexibility of Oligosaccharides Unveiled Through Residual Dipolar Coupling Analysis

Ana Poveda; Giulio Fittolani; Peter H Seeberger; Martina Delbianco; Jesús Jiménez-Barbero

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2021.784318

The Flexibility of Oligosaccharides Unveiled Through Residual Dipolar Coupling Analysis

Front Mol Biosci. 2021 Nov 10:8:784318. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.784318. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Ana Poveda¹, Giulio Fittolani^{2

3}, Peter H Seeberger^{2

3}, Martina Delbianco², Jesús Jiménez-Barbero^{1

4

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ CICbioGUNE, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Derio, Spain.
² Department of Biomolecular Systems, Max-Planck-Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany.
³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁴ Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain.
⁵ Department of Organic Chemistry II, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, EHU-UPV, Leioa, Spain.
⁶ Centro de Investigacion Biomedica En Red de Enfermedades Respiratorias, Madrid, Spain.

Abstract

The intrinsic flexibility of glycans complicates the study of their structures and dynamics, which are often important for their biological function. NMR has provided insights into the conformational, dynamic and recognition features of glycans, but suffers from severe chemical shift degeneracy. We employed labelled glycans to explore the conformational behaviour of a β(1-6)-Glc hexasaccharide model through residual dipolar couplings (RDCs). RDC delivered information on the relative orientation of specific residues along the glycan chain and provided experimental clues for the existence of certain geometries. The use of two different aligning media demonstrated the adaptability of flexible oligosaccharide structures to different environments.

Keywords: 13C-labelling; NMR; RDC; automated glycan assembly; glycans.