Design, Synthesis and Bioactivity of Core 1 O-glycan and its Derivative on Human Gut Microbiota

Background: Disaccharide core 1 (Gal beta 1-3GalNAc) is a common O-glycan structure in nature. Biochemical studies have confirmed that the formation of the core 1 structure is an important initial step in O-glycan biosynthesis and it is of great importance for human body. Objective: Our study will provide meaningful and useful sights for O-glycan synthesis and their bioassay. And all the synthetic glycosides would be used as intermediate building blocks in the scheme developed for oligosaccharide construction. Methods: In this article, we firstly used chemical procedures to prepare core 1 and its derivative, and a novel disaccharide was efficiently synthesized. The structures of the synthesized compounds were elucidated and confirmed by H-1 NMR, C-13 NMR and MS. Then we employed three human gut symbionts belonging to Bacteroidetes, a predominantphyla in the distal gut, as models to study the bioactivity of core 1 and its derivative on human gut microbiota. Results: According to our results, both core 1 and derivative could support the growth of B. fragilis, especially the core 1 derivative, while failed to support the growth of B. thetaiotaomicron and B. ovatus. Conclusion: This suggested that the B. fragilis might have the specificity glycohydrolase to cut the glycosidic bond for acquiring monosaccharide.