Vainauskas, S. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2023

A novel family of sugar-specific phosphodiesterases that remove zwitterionic modifications of N-acetylglucosamine

The zwitterions phosphorylcholine (PC) and phosphoethanolamine (PE) are often found esterified to certain sugars in polysaccharides and glycoconjugates in a wide range of biological species. One such modification involves PC attachment to the 6-carbon of N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc-6-PC) in N-glycans and glycosphingolipids (GSLs) of parasitic nematodes, a modification that helps the parasite evade host immunity. Knowledge of enzymes involved in the synthesis and degradation of PC and PE modifications is limited. More detailed studies on such enzymes would contribute to a better understanding of the function of PC modifications and have potential application in the structural analysis of zwitterion-modified glycans. In this study, we used functional metagenomic screening to identify phosphodiesterases encoded in a human fecal DNA fosmid library that remove PC from GlcNAc-6-PC. A novel bacterial phosphodiesterase was identified and biochemically characterized. This enzyme (termed GlcNAc-PDase) shows remarkable substrate preference for GlcNAc-6-PC and GlcNAc-6-PE, with little or no activity on other zwitterion-modified hexoses. The identified GlcNAc-PDase protein sequence is a member of the large endonuclease/exonuclease/phosphatase (EEP) superfamily where it defines a distinct subfamily of related sequences of previously unknown function, mostly from Clostridium bacteria species. Finally, we demonstrate use of GlcNAc-PDase to confirm the presence of GlcNAc-6-PC in N-glycans and GSLs of the parasitic nematode Brugia malayi in a glycoanalytical workflow.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2021

A broad-specificity O-glycoprotease that enables improved analysis of glycoproteins and glycopeptides containing intact complex O-glycans

Analysis of mucin type O-glycans linked to serine/threonine of glycoproteins is technically challenging, in part, due to a lack of effective enzymatic tools that enable their analysis. Recently, several O-glycan-specific endoproteases that can cleave the protein adjacent to the appended glycan have been described. Despite significant progress in understanding the biochemistry of these enzymes, known O-glycoproteases have specificity constrains, such as inefficient cleavage of glycoproteins bearing sialylated O-glycans, high selectivity for certain type of glycoproteins or protein sequence bias, that limit their analytical application. In this study, we examined the capabilities of an immunomodulating metalloprotease (IMPa) from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The peptide substrate sequence selectivity and its impact on IMPa activity was interrogated using an array of synthetic peptides and their glycoforms. We show that IMPa has no specific P1 residue preference and can tolerate most amino acids at the P1 position, except aspartic acid. The enzyme does not cleave between two adjacent O-glycosites, indicating that O-glycosylated serine/threonine is not allowed at position P1. Glycopeptides with as few as two amino acids on either side of an O-glycosite were specifically cleaved by IMPa. Finally, IMPa efficiently cleaved peptides and proteins carrying sialylated and asialylated O-glycans of varying complexity. We present the use of IMPa in a one-step O-glycoproteomics workflow for glycoprofiling of individual purified glycoproteins granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) and receptor-type tyrosine-protein phosphatase C (CD45) without the need for glycopeptide enrichment. In these examples, IMPa enabled identification of O-glycosites and the range of complex O-glycan structures at each site.

biochemistry↗