Nucleoside diphosphate sugars and saccharide synthesis

Abstract

The discovery of nucleoside diphosphate sugars has led to great advances in the study of the interconversion of sugars and polysaccharide synthesis. It seems that we now know in general how polysaccharides are formed. However, in many cases the experiments have not gone further than the transference of some radioactivity from highly labelled substrates. We have not been able to solve a problem that seems simple, such as the preparation of a starch grain in vitro. This should be possible in the near future and we might become more ambitious and try to obtain bacterial or plant cell walls with their characteristic shapes.