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Glycobiology

A sweet feast

Nature Chemical Biology volume 19, pages 131–132 (2023)Cite this article

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High-mannose N-glycans are common post-translational modifications that occur on many proteins. The mechanism by which these high-mannose N-glycans are consumed by species of Bifidobacterium has now been characterized, which is important given their positive role in human gut microbiota and their abundance in breastfed infants.

The colonic human gut microbiota (HGM) is the highest density of microorganisms on the planet, and this complex ecosystem sources its carbon predominantly from the different polysaccharides and glycans that are present in the gut. The HGM is able to tackle the huge variety of sugars and linkages that are present in this array of complex carbohydrates by using toolkits of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes). There are now detailed example characterizations of how bacteria break down many of the most abundant carbohydrates on our planet into their constituent sugars, not only in the guts of animals, but also in aquatic and soil environments1.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of how B. longum degrades high-mannose N-glycans.

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  1. Institute of Microbiology and Infection, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Lucy I. Crouch

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  1. Lucy I. Crouch
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Correspondence to Lucy I. Crouch.

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Crouch, L.I. A sweet feast. Nat Chem Biol 19, 131–132 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-01199-w

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