Engineering Orthogonal Polypeptide GalNAc-Transferase and UDP-Sugar Pairs
摘要:
O-Linked alpha-N-acetylgalactosamine (O-GalNAc) glycans constitute a major part of the human glycome. They are difficult to study because of the complex interplay of 20 distinct glycosyltransferase isoenzymes that initiate this form of glycosylation, the polypeptide N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferases (GalNAc-Ts). Despite proven disease relevance, correlating the activity of individual GalNAc-Ts with biological function remains challenging due to a lack of tools to probe their substrate specificity in a complex biological environment. Here, we develop a "bump-hole" chemical reporter system for studying GalNAc-T activity in vitro. Individual GalNAc-Ts were rationally engineered to contain an enlarged active site (hole) and probed with a newly synthesized collection of 20 (bumped) uridine diphosphate N-acetylgalactosamine (UDP-GalNAc) analogs to identify enzyme-substrate pairs that retain peptide specificities but are otherwise completely orthogonal to native enzyme-substrate pairs. The approach was applicable to multiple GalNAc-T isoenzymes, including GalNAc-T1 and -T2 that prefer nonglycosylated peptide substrates and GalNAcT-10 that prefers a preglycosylated peptide substrate. A detailed investigation of enzyme kinetics and specificities revealed the robustness of the approach to faithfully report on GalNAc-T activity and paves the way for studying substrate specificities in living systems.
Practical enzyme-based syntheses of uridine 5'-diphosphogalactose and uridine 5'-diphospho-N-acetylgalactosamine on a gram scale
摘要:
Practical enzyme-based routes for the syntheses of uridine 5'-diphosphogalactose (UDP-Gal) and uridine 5'-diphospho-N-acetylgalactosamine (UDP-GalNAc) on millimole scales have been developed. The activity of galactokinase (EC 2.7.1.6) in crude enzyme extracts from galactose-adapted yeast, coupled to a regenerating system for ATP, provides convenient and economical access to galactose-alpha-1-phosphate (Gal-1-P) and galactosamine-alpha-1-phosphate (GalN-1-P). The transfer of UMP to the sugar-1-phosphates was also accomplished enzymatically by Gal-1-P uridyltransferase (EC 2.7.7.12) using uridine 5'-diphosphoglucose (UDP-Glc) as the UMP donor. UDP-Glc was in turn regenerated in situ from glucose-1-phosphate and UTP using UDP-Glc pyrophosphorylase (EC 2.7.7.9). The only chemical step in the sequence was the acetylation of UDP-GalN to afford UDP-GalNAc using N-acetoxysuccinimide. The moderate overall yields (43% and 34% for UDP-Gal and UDP-GalNAc from Gal-1-P and GalN-1-P, respectively) were compensated by the straightforward preparation of the starting materials, UTP and the corresponding sugar-1-P.