Recent advances in the chemical synthesis of glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs): Expanding synthetic versatility for investigating GPI biology

Carbohydrate chemists have been remarkably successful at developing methods for the chemical synthesis of glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs), a highly complex and structurally diverse family of glycolipids that anchor proteins to eukaryotic cell surfaces. With the goal of generating new tools for GPI biological research, several groups in this field have recently shifted their attention from narrowly focused target-oriented total synthesis to the development of more versatile synthetic strategies that allow access to a broad variety of GPIs, GPI analogs, and GPI-anchored proteins. These recent efforts are the topic of this review article.