Hi, I'm Dr. Hannah Roberts. This presentation will explore how glycoscience is impacting in the areas of food and nutrition, and materials and biorenewables, as well as, how glycoscience tools can help overcome challenges in all of the five key topic areas. Sugars are an important component of everyday foods. And understanding the polysaccharide production in plants is important for food security and production, including crop protection. The main challenge is to understand the impact of carbohydrates in food human health. This will result in many impacts, including a healthier society, reduced health-care costs, increased capacity for food and drinks, animal feed industries, veterinary markets, regulatory bodies, education, public information and marketing. As a case study we will look at beta-glucans. These are natural polysaccharides that are beneficial for health and they can be found in many food sources including oats and other cereals, yeast, and mushrooms. They have natural cholesterol-lowering properties and increased consumption leads to a corresponding decrease in the risk of coronary heart disease. Beta-glucans can also impact the immune system by activating white blood cells upon binding. Increased anti-tumor and antimicrobial activity. They are, therefore, a potential for new drug design and health treatments. There are many areas for opportunity within the food and nutrition, and here are three case studies. The first is the production of human milk oligosaccharides to promote infant health. Human milk oligosaccharides make up 10% of solids in human milk and provide benefits in infant development and resistance to infection. Adding human milk oligosaccharides to formula milk could have the potential to improve infant health. But human milk oligosaccharides are notoriously complex and challenging to produce and purify. There is, therefore, a need for alternative approaches, such as biotechnological routes including chemo enzymatic methods. Just to put this in context, milk formula accounted for the largest share of the overall Western Europe baby food and pediatric nutrition market at 44.5%. With $3,449 million in 2012, this market is expected to increase to $3,998 million by 2017. It is a huge and expanding business area. The second case study is the production of high intensity sweetener and sugar substitutes. Due to the rising rates of obesity and its associated diseases, including diabetes, a number of alternatives to table sucrose and sugar have been found and marketed and used as low calorie alternatives for sweetening and enhancing flavors of food. High intensity sweeteners are regulated as food additives and carbohydrate based examples of sweeteners include sucralose, which is 600 times sweeter than sucrose, steviol glycosides which are greater than 200 times sweeter than sucrose, [INAUDIBLE] fruit extracts, 100 times sweeter than sucrose, as well as sugar substitutes such as sugar alcohols including xylitol, often found in chewing gum which is greater than 25% sweeter than sucrose. Again, to put this into context, Europe accounts for the intense sweetener sales of $318 million Euros, an estimated 23% of the global market share with the region's largest markets in the UK, France, and Germany. The role of carbohydrates in foods as a way to improve health and prevent disease is increasingly discussed. As a third example we will look at prebiotics. Promoting a healthy gut microflora is understood to be important for infant and adult health, and healthly aging, as well as preventing allergies, infection, immune disease, and chronic diseases. Prebiotics, usually carbohydrates such as galacto-oligosaccarides, or GOS, are prepared from cows' milk lactose and fructo-oligosaccharides, or FOS, prepared from plant inulins, support the growth of the gastrointestinal micro-flora. Changing its composition or activity can improve health and well-being. This could be a cost effective way to improve or maintain the health of our society. So again, putting this into context, prebiotics is already big business. In 2015, the European market for prebiotics in food and beverages reached 767 million euros, and it is expected to dramatically increase over the next five to ten years. The development of sustainable biorenewables will facilitate the move from our dependence on hydrocarbons towards a sustainable bio-based chemical industry with a lower carbon footprint. For example, cellulose, hemicellulose, starch, chitin, xytoglucan and other polysaccharides are all natural products and are often found in biological waste streams. They can be produced in plants that can be grown on low value, or marginal land, or even by bioremediation, which means the use of naturally occurring or deliberately introduced microorganisms. These biorenewable materials have the potential to replace petrochemical derived soluble polymers for a variety of applications. For example, dispersants such as pigments in paints, highly concentrated filler dispersants for paper, improved performance of detergents, cement dispersions for construction of buildings. Another application is thickness, thickeners. And they could be used in a diverse range of ways, from shampoo formulations to enhanced oil recovery. Another key application area is flocculants, which treat water contamination. There will be many beneficiaries which will include a wide and diverse range of companies, including in the bio-economy of Europe such as the chemical industries, energy companies developing advanced bio refineries, medical device companies for novel biomaterials, membrane companies, biotech companies, the healthcare sector, food ingredients, packaging, biodegradable materials, for example nappies and cosmetic companies. The synthesis and selective modification of polysaccharides is highly challenging. At production scale, glycoenzymes that can catalyze a selective synthesis and, modification of polysaccharides, remain the most cost effective and environmentally friendly route. As more and more genomes are sequenced, novel glycoenzymes, particularly from microorganisms that use polysaccharides as feed stock, are now widely accessible and will transform glyco-biotechnology. Analytical methods based on NMR and mass spectrometry together with atomic force microscopy and optical tweezers are now used hand in hand with other theoretical tools to analyze structures. New instrumentation is required to accompany the overarching concepts, which were at the interface between physics and biology, to support the generation of highly defined, innovative bio-based materials. Surprisingly, little is known about the polysaccharide biosynthesis. And a complete understanding of the enzymes involved will help create production processes and novel biomaterials. As the next generation of advanced biorefineries are designed, it will be important to develop high value carbohydrate derived product streams to exploit the full commercial potential of biomass. Some of the new potential products could be: novel barrier coatings and membranes, natural emulsifiers, superabsorbents, fillers for wound healing, gelling agents, and soft biomaterials for food science and biomedicine. For example, tissue engineering, and also bioplastics, replacements for bisphenol A for plastics and drug delivery agents. In the last ten years, we've seen great advances in the development of tools for glycan analysis. To manage all of this data, and to make the information accessible to the wider scientific community, publicly available databases or modeling tools have been developed for the use in glycoscience. For example, on the computer screen, you can see Glycan Builder, which is a software library and a set of tools to allow for the rapid drawing of glycan structures. The main challenges in the area of tools is finding a permanent home for them all. For example, a database will be curated and maintained as part of a funding project, but when the project ends there is no follow on fund to maintain and update the database further. So when eventually the tools become outdated, we must also establish standards to ensure data quality and consistency across multiple tools. European scientists are at the forefront in developing novel tools for glycan synthesis. The glycan structures found in nature can be made in the laboratory using organic chemistry methods, starting from, and using, carbohydrates. Glycomimetics are small organic molecules derived from sugars. These are the leads for drug development and probes, with a huge potential in the developments of novel vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics against infectious diseases for applications in health and medicine. Another approach to the synthesis of glycans is to use solid supports, enabling the assembly of sugar building blocks into glycans. In a similar way to the programmable synthesizers that have long been used to produce DNA and amino acids, research in this area saw the development of the first automated solid-phase carbohydrate synthesizer. There are a number of online databases and tools which are open access and a valuable resource for the worldwide glycoscience community. The challenge is keeping these tools maintained and up to date, with sufficient funding and, where appropriate, to established standards to ensure data quality and consistency.
