Synthesis of plant carbohydrates and their biological application

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For more than a century the primary carbon source for the production of fuels, chemicals and many materials has been fossil resources. Recently, plant polysaccharides from non-food biomass have emerged as a promising renewable alternative that may displace a significant fraction of petroleum-derived products. However, the molecular structures, functions and biosyntheses of plant polysaccharides must be understood in greater detail to further enhance the economic value of plant biomass. With my Emmy Noether research group we chemically synthesize plant glycans as defined molecular tools for cell wall biology. We successfully established the automated solid-phase synthesis of different classes of cell wall glycans and obtained a collection of more than 65 synthetic oligosaccharides. These glycans proved very useful for the characterization of cell wall glycan-directed antibodies and cell wall-degrading and -modifying enzymes. We also chemo-enzymatically prepared artificial arabinoxylan polysaccharides that have, unlike their natural counterparts, a fully regular substitution pattern. In the next funding period we will continue our efforts towards procuring a library of synthetic cell wall oligosaccharides by synthesizing complex pectic oligosaccharides. Pectin is the most complex polysaccharide in nature containing a large number of rare monosaccharides and unusual glycosidic linkages. Furthermore, we will expand our successful research program towards the chemo-enzymatic synthesis of artificial arabinoxylan polysaccharides to cellulose, xylan, and galactan polysaccharides that are decorated with well-defined patterns of unnatural substituents. These polysaccharides will be explored for structure-property relationship studies that cannot be performed with heterogeneous natural samples.