Synthesis and Studies of Covalent Polydiacetylene Glycopolymers as Scaffolds to Uncover Intricate Carbohydrate-Protein Interactions

Abstract

Overall, the Thesis work establishes: • Monomeric and multimeric ligand-lectin interactions occurring at cell surfaces that could be assessed using purified protein and cellular model system, namely, glycovesicles; • Variation in the ligand density as a hallmark to switch the nature of the interaction between monomeric and multimeric ligand-lectin interactions; • Sparsely populated ligand surfaces promote intermolecular aggregation of the ligand-lectin complex, whereas mostly or fully ligand-functionalized surfaces involve intracellular monomeric ligand-lectin complex formation; • That the binding affinities between intra- and intervesicular modes are comparable, yet the intravesicular mode tend to have a higher binding affinity; • That introduction of amphiphilicity through incorporating sugar moieties on PDA polymers is a viable approach to induce mesomorphism in PDA polymers; • Structural characterization and modeling studies on lamellar arrangement and interdigitization of the glycolipids in the mesophase; • Smectic layering which occurs commonly in glyco-PDAs. The mesophase temperature range and the structural ordering are observed to vary depending on the sugar moiety