In search of new 'sugar cleavers'
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 - 08:10
in Biology & Nature
Complex sugars play multiple and essential roles in the living world as structural elements (cellulose), reserve substances (starch), and molecular signals (such as those of blood types), among others. This variety of functions is based on structures that are equally diverse, due to a multiplicity of building blocks and the different ways in which they can be arranged. The degradation of these carbohydrates therefore requires a variety of specific enzymes, which are far from being identified in their entirety, especially in the microbial world: the human genome contains only a dozen, but our intestinal microbiota has 60,000-70,000!