| << BACK TO MEDIA ARTICLES LIST |
Media
GlycoMar collaboration with the University of Edinburgh
A 3.5 year PhD studentship in chemistry funded through The Scottish Funding Council’s SPIRIT scheme is starting this month. The student will be based in the labs of Dr Dusan Uhrin and will spend time at GlycoMar's labs at the European Cetre for Marine Biotechnology.
Structural characterisation of marine glycosaminoglycans and their interactions with proteins.
As the major part of this project, GlycoMar’s on-site structural characterisation by chemical methods will be complemented by biophysical methods, such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectrometry. University of Edinburgh has excellent facilities in both NMR and MS.
 |
 |
|
|
Driven by the biological activity of the compounds, novel potential therapeutics will thus have their structures determined. This part of the project will include customizing NMR experiments for the structure determination of polysaccharides in complex mixtures.
Selected molecules will be studied in their free forms and in complexes with proteins. Here we will use of paramagnetically tagged glycomolecules provided by Dr. Alison Hulme (Edinburgh). These studies will be important for future biomimetic design.
Heparin disaccharide tagged by a paramagnetic molecule
Relevant publications:
1. Herbert, A.P., Deakin, J. A., Schmidt, C., Blaum, B., Egan, C., Pangburn, M. K., Lyon, M., Uhrín, D., Barlow, P. N. Structure shows that a glycosaminoglycan and protein recognition site in factor H is perturbed by age-related macular degeneration-linked single nucleotide polymorphism. J. Biol. Chem. 282, 18960 - 18968 (2007).
2. Gemma, E., Hulme, A. N., Jahnke, A., Jin, L., Müller, R. M., Uhrín, D. DMT-MM Mediated Functionalisation of the Non-Reducing End of Glycosaminoglycans, Chem. Commun. 2007, 2686 – 2688.
3. Uhrín, D. and Brisson, J.-R., Structure Determination of Microbial Polysaccharides by High Resolution NMR Spectroscopy. NMR in Microbiology: Theory and Application. Eds. Barbotin, J.-N. and Portais, J.-C. Horizon Scientific Press, pp. 165-190 (2000).
Contact: Dr. Dušan Uhrín, School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh
EH9 3JJ, UK. Email: dusan@chem.ed.ac.uk. Phone: 44-(0)131 650 7061, Fax: 44-(0)131 650 7155.
For further information on GlycoMar Limited contact:
Dr Charlie Bavington
Tel: +44 (0)1631 559 368
Email: charlie@glycomar.com
Web: www.glycomar.com
| << BACK TO MEDIA ARTICLES LIST |