UPV/EHU PI Emilio J. Cocinero

A research study by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), led by professor Emilio J. Cocinero from the Physical Chemistry Department, jointly with the University of Oxford, has achieved the isolation and measurement of the anomeric effect for the first time. This phenomenon plays a key role in the stabilisation of sugars in human beings and the findings could result in many relevant applications in Chemistry and Biology. The research will be published in the magazine Nature, under the title ‘Sensing the anomeric effect in a solvent-free environment’.

Molecules in human beings - biomolecules - are divided into four large families: proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and carbohydrates or sugars, which are responsible for energy delivery to the organism. Sugar chemistry is fully affected by the anomeric effect, which was identified in 1955 for the first time. However, its physical origin remained uncertain and it had been impossible to analyse such effect and its implications in detail.

The researchers managed to measure the degree of influence of the anomeric effect in a carbohydrate for the first time, proving that, opposite to what was assumed until now, the exo anomeric effect prevailed over the endo anomeric one. "We did not have any doubt about the existence of such effect, but it had not been characterised until now", explains Cocinero.

"The results suggest that it is important to re-evaluate the influence of the anomeric effect both in chemistry as in biology, given that it is present in most sugars and it alters their proportion in nature", he points out. Moreover, it can explain why organisms select certain carbohydrates despite the fact that there are others that are more abundant in nature.

The study focused on a specific carbohydrate and a small peptide as a model of the sugar-protein structure in living organisms, and used a combination of laser spectroscopy and computational analysis.