Enzymatic glycosylation of small molecules: challenging substrates require tailored catalysts

Glycosylation can significantly improve the physicochemical and biological properties of small molecules like vitamins, antibiotics, flavors, and fragrances. The chemical synthesis of glycosides is, however, far from trivial and involves multistep routes that generate lots of waste. In this review, biocatalytic alternatives are presented that offer both stricter specificities and higher yields. The advantages and disadvantages of different enzyme classes are discussed and illustrated with a number of recent examples. Progress in the field of enzyme engineering and screening are expected to result in new applications of biocatalytic glycosylation reactions in various industrial sectors.     

A Test Set for stiff Initial Value Problem Solvers in the open source software R: Package deTestSet

In this paper we present the R package deTestSet that includes challenging test problems written as ordinary differential equations (ODEs), differential algebraic equations (DAEs) of index up to 3 and implicit differential equations (IDEs). In addition it includes 6 new codes to solve initial value problems (IVPs). The R package is derived from the Test Set for Initial Value Problem Solvers available at http://www.dm.uniba.it/~testset which includes documentation of the test problems, experimental results from a number of proven solvers, and Fortran subroutines providing a common interface to the defining problem functions. Many of these facilities are now available in the R package deTestSet, which comprises an R interface to the test problems and to most of the Fortran solvers. The package deTestSet is free software which is distributed under the GNU General Public License, as part of the R open source software project.     

The Development of a Detection Method Discriminating for Mannosylerythritol Lipids and Acylglycerols

JPC – Journal of Planar Chromatography – Modern TLC -     

Boric acid as a mobile phase additive for high performance liquid chromatography separation of ribose, arabinose and ribulose

A new high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method is described for the analysis of ribose, arabinose and ribulose mixtures obtained from (bio)chemical isomerization processes. These processes gain importance since the molecules can be used for the synthesis of antiviral therapeutics. The HPLC method uses boric acid as a mobile phase additive to enhance the separation on an Aminex HPX-87K column. By complexing with boric acid, the carbohydrates become negatively charged, thus elute faster from the column by means of ion exlusion and are separated because the complexation capacity with boric acid differs from one carbohydrate to another. Excellent separation between ribose, ribulose and arabinose was achieved with concentrations between 0.1 and 10 gL(-1) of discrete sugar.