Large-scale production of oligosaccharides using bacterial functions

Abstract

Oligosaccharides on the cell surface that play important roles in the biochemical recognition processes are potential pharmaceuticals. However it has been very difficult to synthesize these oligosaccharide structures. Recent identification of the genes for glycosyltransferases in bacteria and expression of the genes in Escherichia coli enabled the mass production of glycosyltransferases for enzymatic synthesis of oligosaccharides. Together with the improvements in the supply of sugar nucleotides, substrates of glycosyltransferases, using bacterial functions in genetically engineered bacteria, it became possible to produce a large amount of oligosaccharides.