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Rapid phenolic O-glycosylation of small molecules and complex unprotected peptides in aqueous solvent

Nature Chemistry volume 10, pages 644–652 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Glycosylated natural products and synthetic glycopeptides represent a significant and growing source of biochemical probes and therapeutic agents. However, methods that enable the aqueous glycosylation of endogenous amino acid functionality in peptides without the use of protecting groups are scarce. Here, we report a transformation that facilitates the efficient aqueous O-glycosylation of phenolic functionality in a wide range of small molecules, unprotected tyrosine, and tyrosine residues embedded within a range of complex, fully unprotected peptides. The transformation, which uses glycosyl fluoride donors and is promoted by Ca(OH)2, proceeds rapidly at room temperature in water, with good yields and selective formation of unique anomeric products depending on the stereochemistry of the glycosyl donor. High functional group tolerance is observed, and the phenol glycosylation occurs selectively in the presence of virtually all side chains of the proteinogenic amino acids with the singular exception of Cys. This method offers a highly selective, efficient, and operationally simple approach for the protecting-group-free synthesis of O-aryl glycosides and Tyr-O-glycosylated peptides in water.

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Fig. 1: Natural products containing phenolic O-glycosyl moieties and strategies to access phenolic O-glycosyl linkages in small and complex molecules.
Fig. 2: Evaluating substrate scope.
Fig. 3: Tyrosine-selective glycosylation of glucagon-like peptide-1.
Fig. 4: Tyrosine-selective glycosylation of biologically active peptides.
Fig. 5: Reactivity of cysteine under the aqueous glycosylation conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was initially supported by the W.M. Keck Foundation and later by the National Institutes of Health (NIH GM068649). The authors thank A. Zwicker for insightful discussions. A.St. was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Student Research fellow. G.P. is grateful to NSERC (PDF) and FQRNT (B3) for postgraduate fellowships. L.H. acknowledges support from an NIH postdoctoral fellowship (F32-GM-122204).

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  1. Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Tyler J. Wadzinski, Angela Steinauer, Liana Hie, Guillaume Pelletier, Alanna Schepartz & Scott J. Miller

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  1. Tyler J. Wadzinski
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Contributions

T.J.W., A.St., G.P., A.Sch. and S.J.M. conceived and designed the study. G.P. performed initial experiments. T.J.W., A.St. and L.H. performed the synthetic experiments and analysed data for all compounds. T.J.W., A.St., L.H., G.P., A.Sch. and S.J.M. co-wrote the paper.

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Supplementary synthesis and characterization details, Supplementary Tables 1–5, and NMR spectra

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Wadzinski, T.J., Steinauer, A., Hie, L. et al. Rapid phenolic O-glycosylation of small molecules and complex unprotected peptides in aqueous solvent. Nature Chem 10, 644–652 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0041-8

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