Author: Miguel Ramón Alonso
Late 2018. We are living in the age of deathly Anti-Vax movements, in the era of the upgrowing number of those politely called “pseudosciences”, in the precise moment where social media seems to have taken down people’s concerns and interests in favor of a general madness state.
General madness? Well, not entirely...
One small group of indomitable Spaniards of the Computer Biochemistry Research Group of the Universitat Jaume I (UJI), in collaboration with different researchers, and developed together with the Simon Fraser University of Saint Andrews, have recently published in the journal Nature Communications a multidisciplinary study about small carbohydrate analogs designed to be bond with and inhibit the activity of enzymes in infectious diseases.
These “sugars” act at an atomic level, being able to mimic the natural structure of glycoside hydrolase’s linked substrate. Glycoside hydrolase is known to be not only vital enzymes in carbohydrates' degradation, but also role a key point in infections caused by pathogens, anti-bacterial defense, etc.
In an interview given to the science divulgation site phys.org, Dr. Moliner, professor of Physical Chemistry at the UJI, believes that this study “may represent the first step for designing new medicines."
"The study has made it possible to describe on a molecular level how to inhibit the activity of an important type of enzymes, glycosides. The type of union between these molecules and the enzyme is very strong, so they may be the seed for new medicines," says Moliner.
Further information may be found at: Weiwu Ren et al. Revealing the mechanism for covalent inhibition of glycoside hydrolases by carbasugars at an atomic level, Nature Communications (2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05702-7
NatureCommunications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05702-7
NCBomo I https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22530/
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