A chemical synthesis of UDP-LacNAc and its regioisomer for finding 'oligosaccharide transferases'.

A chemical synthesis of uridine 5'-diphospho-N-acetyllactosamine (Galbeta(1-->4)GlcNAc-UDP; UDP-LacNAc) and Galbeta(1-->3)GlcNAc-UDP is described. Coupling of the disaccharide imidate derivatives with dibenzylphosphate gave the corresponding 1-phosphates, which were condensed with UMP-imidazolate to give the target UDP-oligosaccharides after purification by anion exchange HPLC and gel filtration column chromatography. Using this methodology a variety of oligosaccharide nucleotide analogues can be synthesized. These UDP-oligosaccharides may be useful for finding so-called ;oligosaccharide transferases', the glycosyltransferases which transfer the oligosaccharide moiety onto glycosyl acceptors.