SGER: Catalytic Oligosaccharides in Biological Systems

一般认为，蛋白质和核酸是两类主要的天然生物分子，它们能够在生命系统中起到酶的作用。然而，一些环状低聚糖也被证明在非常简单的非生物体外体系中可以作为催化剂。该项目的目标是对这些观察结果进行扩展。具体地说，这个项目试图证明环状低聚糖(在某些生物体中在某些情况下)不仅可以作为生物系统的催化剂，而且作为它们类似酶的活动的直接结果，对于合成它们的生物体来说，发挥着重要的和意想不到的生理作用。观察到天然低聚糖在生物环境中具有催化活性，可能会对我们目前对生物化学、细胞酶学和进化生物学的理解产生广泛而深刻的影响。此外，它们可能使定向进化或其他方案的设计和开发成为可能，以产生具有新颖和有用性质的寡糖和多糖催化剂家族。

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.