Polysaccharide Biocatalysis: From Synthesizing Carbohydrate Standards to Establishing Characterization Methods

Starch, glycogen, and cellulose are all around us. They are eaten and used on a daily basis but they are not understood completely. Even though these carbohydrates are simple, concerning their repeating unit, they are hard to characterize. In order to try to understand as much as possible about their structure and the relationship between their molecular structure and physical properties, it is very practical to create such polysaccharides, for instance enzymatically, characterize them, and use them as standards for the characterization of natural ones. Therefore, the main objective of this Trend article is to outline different enzymatic routes to such carbohydrates, possibilities for their characterization, and the characterization of natural ones. In vitro enzymatic synthesis is the future for polysaccharide production. By synthesizing and characterizing various polysaccharides with complicated structures, they are understood better and a much closer understanding of nature is reached. The characterization of widely used natural carbohydrates, such as starch and cellulose, can be improved after a detailed analysis of their enzymatically synthesized analogs. An overview of both enzymatic synthesis and various characterization techniques of polysaccharides is presented in this article.