Fluorinated carbohydrates have become indispensable in glycosciences. This contribution provides an overview of how fluorine introduction modifies physical and chemical properties of carbohydrates along with selected examples of its applications.

During circulation in humans and natural selection to escape antibody recognition for decades, A/H3N2 influenza viruses emerged with altered receptor specificities. These viruses lost the ability to agglutinate erythrocytes critical for antigenic characterization and give low yields and acquire adaptive mutations when cultured in eggs and cells, contributing to recent vaccine challenges. Examination of receptor specificities of A/H3N2 viruses reveals that recent viruses compensated for decreased binding of the prototypic human receptor by recognizing α2,6-sialosides on extended LacNAc moieties. Erythrocyte glycomics shows an absence of extended glycans providing a rationale for lack of agglutination by recent A/H3N2 viruses. A glycan remodeling approach installing functional receptors on erythrocytes, allows antigenic characterization of recent A/H3N2 viruses confirming the cocirculation of antigenically different viruses in humans. Computational analysis of HAs in complex with sialosides having extended LacNAc moieties reveals that mutations distal to the RBD reoriented the Y159 side chain resulting in an extended receptor binding site.

Glycan‐protein interactions play an important role in a broad range of physiological processes, raising interest to elucidate the structural interplay. Yet, their dynamic nature limits the analysis by crystallography, whereas NMR spectroscopy suffers from the low 1H dispersion of glycans. Therefore, their sparse fluorination and NMR screening by 1D Saturation Transfer Difference with relay to 19F (STDreF) was previously proposed to exploit the superior dispersion in 19F NMR spectroscopy. A new 2D STD‐TOCSYreF experiment is presented here that enables comprehensive epitope mapping of fluorinated glycans by combining the spectral resolution of 19F with the spatial resolution and coverage of 1H. For an illustration, the 2‐deoxy‐2‐fluoro derivative of the N‐glycan core trimannoside was synthesised and its recognition of Pisum sativum agglutinin by either of the two terminal mannose residues was confirmed. Going beyond the crystallographic information, the 2D STD‐TOCSYreF spectrum moreover visualised collateral contacts from the branching mannose and allowed to assess the ratio of both co‐existing binding modes through the α1,3‐ (67 %) and α1,6‐linked (33 %) terminal mannose moieties.

Protein N-glycosylation stands out for its intrinsic and functionally related heterogeneity. Despite its biomedical interest, Glycoprofile analysis still remains a major scientific challenge. Here, we present an NMR-based strategy to delineate the N-glycan composition in intact glycoproteins and under physiological conditions. The employed methodology allowed dissecting the glycan pattern of the IgE high-affinity receptor (FcεRIα) expressed in human HEK 293 cells, identifying the presence and relative abundance of specific glycan epitopes. Chemical shifts and differences in the signal line-broadening between the native and the unfolded states were integrated to build a structural model of FcεRIα that was able to identify intramolecular interactions between high-mannose N-glycans and the protein surface. In turn, complex type N-glycans reflect a large solvent accessibility, suggesting a functional role as interaction sites for receptors. The interaction between intact FcεRIα and the lectin hGal3, also studied here, confirms this hypothesis and opens new avenues for the detection of specific N-glycan epitopes and for the studies of glycoprotein–receptor interactions mediated by N-glycans.

Molecular mimicry is an essential part of the development of drugs and molecular probes. In the chemical glycobiology field, although many glycomimetics have been developed in the past years, it has been considered that many failures in their use are related to the lack of the anomeric effects in these analogues. Additionally, the origin of the anomeric effects is still the subject of virulent scientific debates. Herein, by combining chemical synthesis, NMR methods, and theoretical calculations, we show that it is possible to restore the anomeric effect for an acetal when replacing one of the oxygen atoms by a CF2 group. This result provides key findings in chemical sciences. On the one hand, it strongly suggests the key relevance of the stereoelectronic component of the anomeric effect. On the other hand, the CF2 analogue adopts the natural glycoside conformation, which might provide new avenues for sugar-based drug design.

The interaction of the SARS CoV2 spike glycoprotein with two sialic acid‐containing trisaccharides (α2,3 and α2,6 sialyl N‐acetyllactosamine) has been demonstrated by NMR. The NMR‐based distinction between the signals of those sialic acids in the glycans covalently attached to the spike protein and those belonging to the exogenous α2,3 and α2,6 sialyl N‐acetyllactosamine ligands has been achieved by synthesizing uniformly 13C‐labelled trisaccharides at the sialic acid and galactose moieties. STD‐1H,13C‐HSQC NMR experiments elegantly demonstrate the direct interaction of the sialic acid residues of both trisaccharides with additional participation of the galactose moieties, especially for the α2,3‐linked analogue. Additional experiments with the spike protein in the presence of a specific antibody for the N‐terminal domain and with the isolated receptor binding and N‐terminal domains of the spike protein unambiguously show that the sialic acid binding site is located at the N‐terminal domain.

We herein propose the use of fluoroacetamide and difluoroacetamide moieties as sensitive tags for the detection of sugar–protein interactions by simple 1H and/or 19F NMR spectroscopy methods. In this process, we have chosen the binding of N,N′‐diacetyl chitobiose, a ubiquitous disaccharide fragment in glycoproteins, by wheat‐germ agglutinin (WGA), a model lectin. By using saturation‐transfer difference (STD)‐NMR spectroscopy, we experimentally demonstrate that, under solution conditions, the molecule that contained the CHF2CONH‐ moiety is the stronger aromatic binder, followed by the analogue with the CH2FCONH‐ group and the natural molecule (with the CH3CONH‐ fragment). In contrast, the molecule with the CF3CONH‐ isoster displayed the weakest intermolecular interaction (one order of magnitude weaker). Because sugar–aromatic CH–π interactions are at the origin of these observations, these results further contribute to the characterization and exploration of these forces and offer an opportunity to use them to unravel complex recognition processes.

Protein dynamics related to function can nowadays be structurally well characterized (i.e., instances obtained by high resolution structures), but they are still ill-defined energetically, and the energy landscapes are only accessible computationally. This is the case for glucose-galactose binding protein (GGBP), where the crystal structures of the apo and holo states provide structural information for the domain rearrangement upon ligand binding, while the time scale and the energetic determinants for such concerted dynamics have been so far elusive. Here, we use GGBP as a paradigm to define a functional conformational landscape, both structurally and energetically, by using an innovative combination of paramagnetic NMR experiments and MD simulations. Anisotropic NMR parameters induced by self-alignment of paramagnetic metal ions was used to characterize the ensemble of conformations adopted by the protein in solution while the rate of interconversion between conformations was elucidated by long molecular dynamics simulation on two states of GGBP, the closed-liganded (holo_cl) and open-unloaded (apo_op) states. Our results demonstrate that, in its apo state, the protein coexists between open-like (68%) and closed-like (32%) conformations, with an exchange rate around 25 ns. Despite such conformational heterogeneity, the presence of the ligand is the ultimate driving force to unbalance the equilibrium toward the holo_cl form, in a mechanism largely governed by a conformational selection mechanism.