Glycan Production by Bacterial Fermentation

Oligosaccharides, in free or in conjugated form, are involved in a wide range of biological processes. To enable the use of such bioactive oligosaccharides for pharmaceutical or food application, efficient ways for their synthesis are needed. The use of chemical and enzymatic synthesis has proved to generate a large variety of natural oligosaccharides and chemical derivatives. However, these procedures are often very laborious and expensive and therefore currently inappropriate for a large-scale synthesis. An alternative approach is the in vivo synthesis of oligosaccharides using recombinant bacterial cells. This chapter gives an overview on the in vivo synthesis of oligosaccharides and will discuss the advantages and challenges of this approach.