Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed 26 February
17:30 - 19:15
Location
Lecture Theatre One, Rutherford House, VUW
2025 Ferrier Public Lecture
Professor Cristina De Castro presents a public lecture about the structural chemistry of carbohydrates.
The Ferrier Public Lecture is presented annually in honour of the late Professor Robin Ferrier. The 2025 lecture will be delivered by Professor Cristina De Castro, professor in organic chemistry at the Department of Chemical Sciences of the University of Napoli, Italy.
Used to describe molecules that have glycosidic bonds, including polysaccharides and carbohydrates, glycans are predominantly found on the surfaces of various cells. Glycans encompass a large class of natural polymers ubiquitous in all organisms. Their diversity is driven by how they are joined together and by the inclusion of substituents, often termed ‘decorations’, which leads to inherent complexity in these molecules.
Carbohydrates are considered information-rich molecules, but while there is a universal genetic code, there is no evidence for a universal ‘glycan code’. In most cases, glycans produced by microbes differ consistently from those characterised in eukaryotes, humans for example. But the reverse is true for most viruses, where glycans are identical to their host. Given the variations that exist between these two extremes, some bacteria have eukaryotic-like glycans, and some viruses don’t.
The 2025 Ferrier Public Lecture will highlight the relevance of carbohydrates’ structural chemistry in different areas and cover a range of interesting examples, including ‘sweet’ glycans that exist in bacteria from the gut microbiota, ‘sour’ glycans that enable pathogens to elude immune surveillance and ‘spicy’ glycans, whose discovery has triggered many open points in glycobiology.
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