Towards regioselective synthesis of oligosaccharides by use of alpha-glucosidases with different substrate specificity

alpha-Glucosidase from two microbial sources, Bacillus stearothermophilus and Brewer's yeast, has been used to catalyze transglycosylation reactions and a comparative study was carried out to determine the regioselectivity of this reaction. Bacterial alpha-glucosidase exhibited higher transfer activity with maltose and was able to synthesize tri- and tetrasaccharides in high yield (27%). In the case of yeast enzyme, only trisaccharides were synthesized in lower yield. Structure analysis of transglycosylation products by means of GC-MS and NMR spectroscopy revealed a correlation between the hydrolytic substrate specificity and the regioselectivity of transglycosylation reaction. Higher substrate specificity of bacterial enzyme, however, influenced its transglucosylation activity toward other saccharide acceptors.