Multivalent ligand mimetics of LecA from P. aeruginosa: synthesis and NMR studies

Molecular recognition of glycans plays an important role in glycomic and glycobiology studies. For example, pathogens have a number of different types of lectin for targeting host sugars. In bacteria, lectins exist sometimes as domains of bacterial toxins and exploit adhesion to glycoconjugates as a means of entering host cells. Herein, we describe the synthesis of three glycodendrons with the aim to dissect the fine structural details involved in the multivalent carbohydrate-protein interactions. LecA, from the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, has been used to characterize galactose dendrons interaction using one of the most widespread NMR technique for the elucidation of receptor-ligand binding in solution, the saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR. Furthermore, the effective hydrodynamic radius of each dendrimer recognized by LecA was estimated from the diffusion coefficients determined by pulsed-field-gradient stimulated echo (PFG-STE) NMR experiments.