Abstract:

A team led by Prof. Xinshan Ye (the associate editor of this journal) at Peking University, after many years of research, has recently achieved a major breakthrough in the field of polysaccharide synthesis. Arabinogalactan was chosen as the target molecule for their research. This polysaccharide molecule is composed of a linear galactan chain (chain A) linked with two arabinan chains (chain B), forming a highly branched structure. Using simple monosaccharides as starting materials, researchers were able to produce oligosaccharide chains on the gram scale by the glycosyl donor preactivation-based one-pot oligosaccharide synthesis strategy they previously developed. The cis-1,2-glycosidic bonds were built in a highly stereoselective manner through the conformationally-constrained glycosyl donor. The one-pot protocol was used again for the rapid construction of the two chains (chain A and chain B). Finally, these chains were brought together with a [31+31+30] coupling reaction via the glycosylation promoter they developed previously, thus achieving the total synthesis of the highly branched 92-mer arabinogalactan for the first time.

Key words: Xinshan Ye&rsquo, s team,  , Polysaccharides