Emergence and Structural Characteristics of Chondroitin Sulfates in the Animal Kingdom

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews data that provides a framework for the selective appearance and special structural characteristics of galactosaminoglycans (GalAGs) and raises questions of the way these characteristics evolved during evolution. The analysis of the species of the domain eukarya showed the absence of sulfated glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) in protista, plantae, and fungi. In the animal kingdom, the appearance of chondroitin sulfate (CS) coincides with the emergence of eumetazoa, which are animals that display true tissues. This compound is ubiquitously found in all tissues and species analyzed. The occurrence of dermatan sulfate (DS) is a late event in the evolutionary GAG tree, being restricted to the appearance of deuterostomes. The sulfation patterns of different disaccharides and the copolymeric nature of these compounds related to phylogenetic aspects are discussed in the chapter. It also provides the examples of structural branches for the GalAGs in bacteria and animal tissues. The divergence in the appearance of DS and heparan sulfate (HS) suggests that the epimerases involved in the biosynthesis of these families of GAGs appeared in the phylogenetic tree at distinct moments.