Department of Biology
Virginia Tech Polytechnic Institute
BLACKSBURG, VA 24061-0406
USA
Phone 540 231 8951
Fax 540 231 9307
On this web site, you can find out about our ongoing research, recent publications,
who the lab members are, and the protocols that we have developed.
From the left to the right:
Tifany Felton, Sukanda Vichitphan, Cristina Abbate, Shivanjali Joshi,, Mark Carroll, Asim Esen, Lionel Verdoucq, Colleen Thomas, Katherine Hanna, Jennifer Gough
Introduction to b-glucosidases:
Carbohydrates are the most diverse group of organic molecules in the biosphere with respect to stereochemistry, type of assembly, chain length and conjugation to a large variety of noncarbohydrate aglycones. They perform a multitude of functions that living organisms require for their structure, metabolism, defense and communication. The diversity of carbohydrates in the biosphere is accompanied by a large number of enzymes that are involved in carbohydrate synthesis and degradation. Of these enzymes, glycoside hydrolases catalyze the selective hydrolysis of glysosidic bonds in oligosaccharides, polysaccharides and their conjugates. They occur universally in all living organisms from taxa of Archae to humans. b-glucosidases constitute a major group among glycoside hydrolases and they play key roles in a variety of fundamental biological (e.g., growth and development, chemical defense, host-parasite interactions, cellulolysis, lignification, glycosylceramid and vitamin B6 metabolism, signaling, etc.) and biotechnological (biomass conversion, food detoxification and beverage quality enhancement) processes. Our laboratory's research is focused on understanding the structure and function of family 1 b-glucosidases with special emphasis on the mechanism of substrate specificity. To address questions related to substrate (i.e., aglycone) specificity, we use plant b-glucosidases as model systems because they represent extremes in substrate specificity even when there is high sequence identity among them.Want to know more about research done on the lab? Click ------> here.
If there are any dead links or if you have any comments about
the website, please contact Lionel Verdoucq
This website was last updated on October 12, 2001
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