UC Davis

O-Acetylated sialic acid has been found in the Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W (NmW) capsular polysaccharide (CPS) and is a required structural component of clinically used NmW CPS-based polysaccharide and polysaccharide-conjugate vaccines. The role of sialic acid O-acetylation in NmW CPS, however, is not clearly understood. This is partially due to the lack of a precise control of the percentage and the location of O-acetylation which is labile and susceptible to migration. We explore chemoenzymatic synthetic strategies for preparing N-acetylated analogues of O-acetylated NmW CPS oligosaccharides which can serve as structurally stable probe mimics. Substrate specificity studies of NmW CPS polymerase (NmSiaD_W) identified 4-azido-4-deoxy-N-acetylmannosamine (ManNAc4N₃) and 6-azido-6-deoxy-N-acetylmannosamine (ManNAc6N₃) as suitable chemoenzymatic synthons for synthesizing N-acetyl analogues of NmW CPS oligosaccharides containing 7-O-acetyl-N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5,7Ac₂) and/or 9-O-acetyl-N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5,9Ac₂). The synthesis was achieved by NmSiaD_W-dependent sequential one-pot multienzyme (OPME) strategy with in situ generation of the corresponding sugar nucleotides from simple monosaccharides or derivatives to form N₃-oligosaccharides which were converted to the desired NAc-oligosaccharides by an efficient one-step chemical transformation.