Chemical Biology and Biomedicine: Glycolipids and Glycosphingolipids

Amphiphilic glycolipids represent a highly heterogeneous family of biomolecules. In most areas, the understanding of their biosynthesis, functions, activity, and implications in biomedicine is still at the beginning, whereas in others knowledge has already reached a remarkable level. Since it is not possible to cover the field of glycolipid research in total, the authors have focused selectively on four dominating areas in glycolipidology. Sect. 2 summarizes our present knowledge of the sepsis-inducing Gram-negative bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS), with the lipid A as the endotoxic principle, and the recently discovered bacterial glycosphingolipids replacing LPS. The structures and putative roles of glycosphingolipids in helminthic infections, which affect more than 25% of the world’s population are discussed in Sect. 3. Plant glycolipids reviewed in Sect. 4 represent a structurally and functionally heterogeneous class of molecules, which gain augmenting interest due to the increasing market for genetically transformed plants in the agricultural industry. Likewise, mammalian glycosphingolipids, although under study for more than 100 years, are still characterized by a continuously growing number of functions in embryogenesis, cancer and metastasis, viral and bacterial infections, signaling, and immunomodulation. Respective structural considerations and recent knowledge about the supramolecular organization of glycosphingolipids in plasma membranes as well as their potential role in cell physiology and disease are summarized in Sect. 5.