Metabolic Engineering of Bacteria

Metabolic glycoengineering is a technique introduced in the early 90s of the last century by Reutter et al.. It utilises the ability of cells to metabolically convert sugar derivatives with bioorthogonal side chains like azides or alkynes and by that incorporation into several glyco structures. Afterwards, the carbohydrates can be labelled to study their distribution, dynamics and roles in different biological processes. So far many studies were performed on mammal cell lines as well as in small animals. Very recently, bacterial glyco-structures were targeted by glycoengineering, showing promising results in infection prevention by reducing pathogen adhesion towards human epithelial cells. Introduction Bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on earth, and are present in most habitats on the planet, e. g., they live in symbiosis with plants and animals. Compared to human cells there are ten times as many bacterial cells in our body. Most of them are harmless or even beneficial. But some species are pathogenic and cause infectious diseases with more than 1.2 million deaths each year [1]. Those infections include cholera, syphilis, anthrax, leprosy, and bubonic plague as well as respiratory infections like tuberculosis. 1 This article is part of the Proceedings of the Beilstein Glyco-Bioinformatics Symposium 2013. www.proceedings.beilstein-symposia.org Discovering the Subtleties of Sugars June 10 – 14, 2013, Potsdam, Germany