Light at the end of a 50 Å long tunnel: crystal structures of enzyme–oligosaccharide complexes reveal how cellobiohydrolase I binds cellulose

Abstract

substrate analogue is particularly interesting since it provides the first glimpse of an intact oligosaccharide bound across the active site of an enzyme. The pyranaose 1ing is distorted into a boat conformation which gives a pseudo-axial conformation for the glycosidic bond and leaving group as predicted by David Phillips in 1974 and as expected on stereoelectronic grounds.