Recent Development in Ligation Methods for Glycopeptide and Glycoprotein Synthesis

Abstract

Glycoproteins are produced by the post-translational modification process of proteins and they play an important role in mediating various biological processes. Our understanding towards biochemical functions of individual glycoproteins has been seriously hampered due to the heterogeneous expression of carbohydrate parts in glycoproteins. Despite the advancement in recombinant expression and chromatographic techniques, the isolation of pure glycoforms remains nearly impossible. To obtain homogenous glycoproteins, tremendous efforts hves been spent in developing various ligation and glycosylation techniques. This minireview discusses selected methods for the preparation and ligation of glycopeptides. The importance of the development of new chemical synthesis method for glycoproteins has also been discussed, which would be one of the next directions in this field.

Keywords: Dual native chemical ligation; Glycopeptides; Glycoproteins; Native chemical ligation; Sugar-assisted ligation.