Synthesis and screening of a library of Lewis deoxyfluoro-analogues reveals differential recognition by glycan-binding partners.

Glycan-mediated interactions play a crucial role in biology and medicine, influencing signalling, immune responses, and disease pathogenesis. However, the use of glycans in biosensing and diagnostics is limited by cross-reactivity, as certain glycan motifs can be recognised by multiple biologically distinct protein receptors. To address this specificity challenge, we report the enzymatic synthesis of a 150-member library of site-specifically fluorinated Lewis analogues ('glycofluoroforms') using naturally occurring enzymes and fluorinated monosaccharides.

The Impact of Metagenomics on Biocatalysis.

In the ever-growing demand for sustainable ways to produce high-value small molecules, biocatalysis has come to the forefront of greener routes to these chemicals. As such, the need to constantly find and optimise suitable biocatalysts for specific transformations has never been greater. Metagenome mining has been shown to rapidly expand the toolkit of promiscuous enzymes needed for new transformations, without requiring protein engineering steps.

A method for the systematic selection of enzyme panel candidates by solving the maximum diversity problem.

Enzymes are being increasingly exploited for their potential as industrial biocatalysts. Establishing a portfolio of useful biocatalysts from large and diverse protein family is challenging and a systematic method for candidate selection promises to aid in this task. Moreover, accurate enzyme functional annotation can only be confidently guaranteed through experimental characterisation in the laboratory.