SGER: Catalytic Oligosaccharides in Biological Systems

SGER：生物系统中的催化低聚糖

• 批准号: 0135592
• 负责人: Eugene Nester
• 金额: $ 6.42万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-11-15 至 2002-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0135592&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SGER; Catalytic; Oligosaccharides; Biological; Systems

It is generally held that proteins and nucleic acids are the two principle classes of naturally occurring biomolecules capable of acting as enzymes in living systems. However, it has also been demonstrated that some cyclic oligosaccharides can act as catalysts in very simple non-biological in vitro systems. The goal of this project is to expand upon these observations. Specifically, this project seeks to demonstrate that cyclic oligosaccharides (in some organisms under certain circumstances) may not only act as catalysts in biological systems, but also, as a direct consequence of their enzyme-like activities, play important and unexpected physiological roles for the organisms that synthesize them. The observation that naturally occurring oligosaccharides possess catalytic activities in biological circumstances may have broad and profound implications for our current understanding of biological chemistry, cellular enzymology, and evolutionary biology. Moreover, they may enable the design and exploitation of directed evolutionary or other schemes to generate families of oligo- and polysaccharide catalysts with novel and useful properties.

人们普遍认为，蛋白质和核酸是能够在生命系统中充当酶的两类天然生物分子。 然而，也已经证明，一些环状寡糖可以在非常简单的非生物体外系统中充当催化剂。 这个项目的目标是扩大这些观察。 具体而言，该项目旨在证明环状寡糖（在某些情况下在某些生物体中）不仅可以在生物系统中充当催化剂，而且作为其酶样活性的直接结果，对合成它们的生物体发挥重要和意想不到的生理作用。 天然存在的寡糖在生物环境中具有催化活性的观察结果可能对我们目前对生物化学，细胞酶学和进化生物学的理解具有广泛而深刻的影响。 此外，它们可以使定向进化或其他方案的设计和开发，以产生具有新的和有用的性质的寡糖和多糖催化剂的家庭。