Lipophilic sugar nucleotide synthesis by structure-based design of nucleotidylyltransferase substrates.

Structure-based design of alkyl sugar-1-phosphates provides an efficient nucleotidylyltransferase-catalyzed synthesis of a series of new lipophilic sugar nucleotides possessing long or branched alkyl chains, thereby demonstrating the utility of nucleotidylyltransferases to catalyze the synthesis of sugar nucleotides with potential applications in lipopolysaccharide and lipoglycopeptide biosynthesis.