Multivalency plays a major role in biological processes and particularly in the relationship between pathogenic microorganisms and their host that involves protein–glycan recognition. These interactions occur during the first steps of infection, for specific recognition between host and bacteria, but also at different stages of the immune response. The search for high-affinity ligands for studying such interactions involves the combination of carbohydrate head groups with different scaffolds and linkers generating multivalent glycocompounds with controlled spatial and topology parameters. By interfering with pathogen adhesion, such glycocompounds including glycopolymers, glycoclusters, glycodendrimers and glyconanoparticles have the potential to improve or replace antibiotic treatments that are now subverted by resistance. Multivalent glycoconjugates have also been used for stimulating the innate and adaptive immune systems, for example with carbohydrate-based vaccines. Bacteria present on their surfaces natural multivalent glycoconjugates such as lipopolysaccharides and S-layers that can also be exploited or targeted in anti-infectious strategies.

Multivalent carbohydrates are currently produced in many forms ranging from dendrimers, polymers, micelles, vesicles, nanoparticles to functionalized nanotubes, in order to enhance the potency of the carbohydrates as ligands or inhibitors. Variations in valency range from systems containing two carbohydrate units to those containing more than 2000. In this perspective a number of popular target proteins for multivalent binding/inhibition have been selected. The optimal systems displaying the largest multivalency effects are discussed with respect to their mechanism of multivalent binding.

Carbohydrate–protein interactions are involved in a multitude of biological recognition processes. Since individual protein–carbohydrate interactions are usually weak, multivalency is often required to achieve biologically relevant binding affinities and selectivities. Among the possible mechanisms responsible for binding enhancement by multivalency, the simultaneous attachment of a multivalent ligand to several binding sites of a multivalent receptor (i.e. chelation) has been proven to have a strong impact. This article summarizes recent examples of chelating lectin ligands of different size. Covered lectins include the Shiga-like toxin, where the shortest distance between binding sites is ca. 9 Å, wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) (shortest distance between binding sites 13–14 Å), LecA from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (shortest distance 26 Å), cholera toxin and heat-labile enterotoxin (shortest distance 31 Å), anti-HIV antibody 2G12 (shortest distance 31 Å), concanavalin A (ConA) (shortest distance 72 Å), RCA₁₂₀ (shortest distance 100 Å), and Erythrina cristagalli (ECL) (shortest distance 100 Å). While chelating binding of the discussed ligands is likely, experimental proof, for example by X-ray crystallography, is limited to only a few cases.

Chemical cross-linking mass spectrometry is rapidly emerging as a prominent technique to study protein structures. Structural information is obtained by covalently connecting peptides in close proximity by small reagents and identifying the resulting peptide pairs by mass spectrometry. However, substoichiometric reaction efficiencies render routine detection of cross-linked peptides problematic. Here, we present a new trifunctional cross-linking reagent, termed PhoX, which is decorated with a stable phosphonic acid handle. This makes the cross-linked peptides amenable to the well-established immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) enrichment. The handle allows for 300× enrichment efficiency and 97% specificity. We exemplify the approach on various model proteins and protein complexes, e.g., resulting in a structural model of the LRP1/RAP complex. Almost completely removing linear peptides allows PhoX, although noncleavable, to be applied to complex lysates. Focusing the database search to the 1400 most abundant proteins, we were able to identify 1156 cross-links in a single 3 h measurement.