General notes on the practical use of glycosidases

Many of the methods used to illustrate the diverse reaction conditions employed for glycosidase mediated oligosaccharide synthesis have little or incomplete characterisation. Yields are calculated in a range of ways from the limiting reagent 

Another problem is the units used for detailing the amount of enzyme used for these biotransformations. Quantities are often given in units (U), but this is rarely accompanied by a definition of what a unit represents and this value changes between different enzymes, commercial sources and grades of purification. This is an issue that may obscure the use of glycosidases in the synthetic laboratory but the uninitiated should not be discouraged. 

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