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Bacterial glycoconjugates, such as cell surface polysaccharides and glycoproteins, play important roles in cellular interactions and survival. Enzymes called nucleotidyltransferases use sugar-1-phosphates and nucleoside triphosphates (NTPs) to produce nucleoside diphosphate sugars (NDP-sugars), which serve as building blocks for most glycoconjugates. Research spanning several decades has shown that some bacterial nucleotidyltransferases have broad substrate tolerance and can be exploited to produce a variety of NDP-sugars in vitro. While these enzymes are known to be allosterically regulated by NDP-sugars and their fragments, much work has focused on the effect of active site mutations alone. Here, we show that rational mutations in the allosteric site of the nucleotidyltransferase RmlA lead to expanded substrate tolerance and improvements in catalytic activity that can be explained by subtle changes in quaternary structure and interactions with ligands. These observations will help inform future studies on the directed biosynthesis of diverse bacterial NDP-sugars and downstream glycoconjugates.

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α-Dystroglycan (α-DG) is a highly-glycosylated surface membrane protein. Defects in the O-mannosyl glycan of α-DG cause dystroglycanopathy, a group of congenital muscular dystrophies. The core M3 O-mannosyl glycan contains tandem ribitol-phosphate (RboP), a characteristic feature first found in mammals. Fukutin and fukutin-related protein (FKRP), whose mutated genes underlie dystroglycanopathy, sequentially transfer RboP from cytidine diphosphate-ribitol (CDP-Rbo) to form a tandem RboP unit in the core M3 glycan. Here, we report a series of crystal structures of FKRP with and without donor (CDP-Rbo) and/or acceptor [RboP-(phospho-)core M3 peptide] substrates. FKRP has N-terminal stem and C-terminal catalytic domains, and forms a tetramer both in crystal and in solution. In the acceptor complex, the phosphate group of RboP is recognized by the catalytic domain of one subunit, and a phosphate group on O-mannose is recognized by the stem domain of another subunit. Structure-based functional studies confirmed that the dimeric structure is essential for FKRP enzymatic activity.

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Bacillus subtilis 168 EpsC is annotated as "Probable polysaccharide biosynthesis protein" in the SwissProt database. epsC is part of the eps operon, thought to be involved in the biosynthesis of exopolymeric substances (EPS). The present study was undertaken to determine the molecular function of EpsC. Sequence analysis of EpsC suggested the presence of a transmembrane domain. Two N-terminal deletion mutants in which residues 1-89 (EpsC89) and 1-115 (EpsC115) are deleted were cloned and overexpressed. Enzyme activity and substrate preferences were investigated by reverse phase HPLC, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy and absorption spectroscopy. These data show that EpsC has UDP-GlcNAc 4,6-dehydratase activity in vitro. Purified recombinant proteins were found to utilise UDP-Glc and TDP-Glc also as substrates. In addition, EpsC115 could utilise UDP-Gal and UDP-GalNAc as substrates whereas EpsC89 could only bind these two sugar nucleotides. These results show that deletion of a longer N-terminal region broadens substrate specificity. These broadened specificity is perhaps an outcome of the deletion of the putative transmembrane domain and may not be present in vivo. EpsC, together with the aminotransferase EpsN (Kaundinya CR et al., Glycobiology, 2018) and acetyltransferase EpsM (unpublished data), appears to be involved in the biosynthesis of N,N'-diacetylbacillosamine.

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DesII is a radical SAM lyase that catalyzes a deamination reaction during the biosynthesis of desosamine in Streptomyces venezuelae. Competing mechanistic hypotheses for this radical-mediated reaction are differentiated according to whether a 1,2-migration takes place and the timing of proton abstraction following generation of a substrate α-hydroxyalkyl radical intermediate. In this study, the deuterated C4 epimer of the natural substrate, TDP-4-amino-4-deoxy-d-[3-2H]fucose, was prepared and shown to be a substrate for DesII undergoing deamination alone with a specific activity that is only marginally reduced (∼3-fold) with respect to that of deamination of the natural substrate. Furthermore, pH titration of the deamination reaction implicates the presence of a hydron acceptor that facilitates catalysis but does not appear to be necessary. On the basis of these as well as previously reported results, a mechanism involving direct elimination of ammonium with concerted proton transfer to the nucleofuge from the adjacent α-hydroxyalkyl radical is proposed.

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Many bacteria require l-rhamnose as a key cell wall component. This sugar is transferred to the cell wall using an activated donor dTDP-l-rhamnose, which is produced by the dTDP-l-rhamnose biosynthetic pathway. We determined the crystal structure of the second enzyme of this pathway dTDP-α-d-glucose 4,6-dehydratase (RfbB) from Bacillus anthracis. Interestingly, RfbB only crystallized in the presence of the third enzyme of the pathway RfbC; however, RfbC was not present in the crystal. Our work represents the first complete structural characterization of the four proteins of this pathway in a single Gram-positive bacterium.

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The importance of unusual deoxysugars in biology has become increasingly apparent over the past decade. Some, for example, play key roles in the physiological activities of the natural products to which they are attached. Here we describe a study of TylM1, a dimethyltransferase from Streptomyces fradiae involved in the production of dTDP-mycaminose. From this investigation, the manner in which the enzyme binds its dimethylated product has been revealed. More significantly, by providing the enzyme with an alternative substrate, it was possible to produce a monomethylated product not observed in nature. This has important ramifications for the production of unique carbohydrates that may prove useful in drug design.

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RATIONALE: Glycosylation of proteins and lipids is reliant on the availability of monosaccharide-activated donors known as sugar nucleotides. They are responsible for glycosylation in cells. Reliable quantification of these sugar nucleotides might provide an insight into their biological roles and attributes. METHODS: Herein, a method is described for the quantification of sugar nucleotides using ultra high pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) tandem mass spectrometry, allowing selective detection of sugar nucleotides in a biological sample. Seven model sugar nucleotide standards commonly associated with lipid and protein glycosylation were separated on a porous graphitic carbon column using an UHPLC system coupled to a triple stage quadrupole mass spectrometer utilizing a multiple reaction monitoring approach. RESULTS: Successful baseline separation of these metabolites was attained in 6 min using an ammonium formate buffer and acetonitrile, circumventing the use of MS-unfriendly pairing reagents. The linear dynamic range of this procedure was established over almost three orders of magnitude from 20 pg to 1 ng (40 pg to 2 ng for the isomers UDP-GlcNAc/GalNAc). The limit of detection ranged from 15 pg to 30 pg while the limit of quantification ranged from 50 pg to 100 pg. Furthermore, viability of this method was tested using three different breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-231-BR, and MDA-MB-361) with the successful identification and quantification of all seven targeted sugar nucleotides. CONCLUSIONS: The described method permitted the quantitative analysis of sugar nucleotides in 10 min, thus allowing the practical use of this approach in high-throughput settings. The method was also very effective for the quantification of sugar nucleotides derived from three different breast cancer cell lines. The distribution of sugar nucleotides was different among the different cell lines and unique for each cell line.

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Modified nucleoside triphosphates (dA(Hs)TP, dU(POH)TP, and dC(Val)TP) bearing imidazole, hydroxyl, and carboxylic acid residues connected to the purine and pyrimidine bases through alkyne linkers were prepared. These modified dN*TPs were excellent substrates for various DNA polymerases in primer extension reactions. Moreover, the combined use of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) and the modified dNTPs led to efficient tailing reactions that rival those of natural counterparts. Finally, the triphosphates were tolerated by polymerases under PCR conditions, and the ensuing modified oligonucleotides served as templates for the regeneration of unmodified DNA. Thus, these modified dN*TPs are fully compatible with in vitro selection methods and can be used to develop artificial peptidases based on DNA.

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We described the integration of the general reversibility of glycosyltransferase-catalyzed reactions, artificial glycosyl donors, and a high throughput colorimetric screen to enable the engineering of glycosyltransferases for combinatorial sugar nucleotide synthesis. The best engineered catalyst from this study, the OleD Loki variant, contained the mutations P67T/I112P/T113M/S132F/A242I compared with the OleD wild-type sequence. Evaluated against the parental sequence OleD TDP16 variant used for screening, the OleD Loki variant displayed maximum improvements in k(cat)/K(m) of >400-fold and >15-fold for formation of NDP-glucoses and UDP-sugars, respectively. This OleD Loki variant also demonstrated efficient turnover with five variant NDP acceptors and six variant 2-chloro-4-nitrophenyl glycoside donors to produce 30 distinct NDP-sugars. This study highlights a convenient strategy to rapidly optimize glycosyltransferase catalysts for the synthesis of complex sugar nucleotides and the practical synthesis of a unique set of sugar nucleotides.

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Unusual dTDP-sugars are key intermediate in many pathogenic bacteria. In this study, negative-ion electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS-MS) with collision-induced dissociation (CID) was used to study the fragmentation characteristics of six unusual nucleotide diphosphate sugars. The results indicated the major fragment of the six unusual nucleoside sugars observed in the ESI-MS-MS spectra resulted from cleavage of diphosphate moiety and their characteristic fragment ions at m/z 401, 383, and 321, correspond to [TDP-H] together with fragment ions resulting from the loss of water and phosphate moiety, respectively. Furthermore, 4-position substituted change of unusual sugar rings affected the stability of two important characteristic fragment ions of [glycosyl-1"-PO3](-) and [glycosyl-1"-P2O6](-).

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Nucleotide diphosphate (NDP) sugars are widely present in antibiotics and glycoconjugates, such as protein- and lipid-linked oligosaccharides, where they act as substrates for glycosyltransferase in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Among NDP sugars, NDP-4-keto sugars are key intermediates in the synthesis of structurally diverse NDP sugars with different functional groups. However, the structural identification of the NDP-4-keto sugars via mass spectrometry (electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS)) continues to be a challenge because of the carbonyl group in these sugars interferes with ionization process. In this study, we evaluated various hydroxylamine compounds for the derivatization of NDP-4-keto sugars, so that the detection of the sugars by ESI-MS is more efficient. As a result, O-(2,3,4,5,6-pentafluorobenzyl)hydroxylamine was found to be the most effective tagging molecule for the detection of NDP-4-keto sugars without being interfered by original MS. This method can be used for identifying NDP-4-keto sugars such as thymidine diphosphate (TDP)-, adenosine diphosphate (ADP)-, uridine diphosphate (UDP)-, and cytosine diphosphate (CDP)-4-keto sugars as well as new NDP-4-keto-dehydratases.

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Spinosyns A and D (spinosad), like many other complex polyketides, are tailored near the end of their biosyntheses through the addition of sugars. SpnG, which catalyzes their 9-OH rhamnosylation, is also capable of adding other monosaccharides to the spinosyn aglycone (AGL) from TDP-sugars; however, the substitution of UDP-D-glucose for TDP-D-glucose as the donor substrate is known to result in a >60000-fold reduction in k(cat). Here, we report the structure of SpnG at 1.65 Å resolution, SpnG bound to TDP at 1.86 Å resolution, and SpnG bound to AGL at 1.70 Å resolution. The SpnG-TDP complex reveals how SpnG employs N202 to discriminate between TDP- and UDP-sugars. A conformational change of several residues in the active site is promoted by the binding of TDP. The SpnG-AGL complex shows that the binding of AGL is mediated via hydrophobic interactions and that H13, the potential catalytic base, is within 3 Å of the nucleophilic 9-OH group of AGL. A model for the Michaelis complex was constructed to reveal the features that allow SpnG to transfer diverse sugars; it also revealed that the rhamnosyl moiety is in a skew-boat conformation during the transfer reaction.

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Mix'n'match: Enzymatic total synthesis of TDP-D-olivose was achieved, starting from TDP-4-keto-6-deoxy-D-glucose, by combining three pathway enzymes with one cofactor-regenerating enzyme. The results also revealed that MtmC is a bifunctional enzyme that can perform a 4-ketoreduction necessary for D-olivose biosynthesis besides the previously found C-methyltransfer for D-mycarose biosynthesis.

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We report that simple glycoside donors can drastically shift the equilibria of glycosyltransferase-catalyzed reactions, transforming NDP-sugar formation from an endothermic to an exothermic process. To demonstrate the utility of this thermodynamic adaptability, we highlight the glycosyltransferase-catalyzed synthesis of 22 sugar nucleotides from simple aromatic sugar donors, as well as the corresponding in situ formation of sugar nucleotides as a driving force in the context of glycosyltransferase-catalyzed reactions for small-molecule glycodiversification. These simple aromatic donors also enabled a general colorimetric assay for glycosyltransfer, applicable to drug discovery, protein engineering and other fundamental sugar nucleotide-dependent investigations. This study directly challenges the general notion that NDP-sugars are 'high-energy' sugar donors when taken out of their traditional biological context.

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Succinyl-cycloSal-phosphate triesters of ribo- and 2'-deoxyribonucleosides were attached to aminomethyl polystyrene as an insoluble solid support and reacted with phosphate-containing nucleophiles yielding nucleoside di- and triphosphates, nucleoside diphosphate sugars, and dinucleoside polyphosphates in high purity after cleavage from the solid support. Here, reactive cycloSal-phosphate triesters were used as immobilized reagents that led to a generally applicable method for the efficient synthesis of phosphorylated biomolecules and phosphate-bridged bioconjugates.

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dTDP-L-rhamnose (dTDP-Rha)-synthesizing dTDP-6-deoxy-L-lyxo-4-hexulose reductase (4-KR) and dTDP-Rha 4-epimerase were characterized from Burkholderia thailandensis E264 by utilizing rmlD(Bth) (BTH_I1472) and wbiB(Bth) (BTH_I1476), respectively. Incubation of the recombinant WbiB(Bth) with RmlA/RmlB/RmlC/Tal, which has previously been shown to generate dTDP-6-deoxy-L-talose (dTDP-6dTal) from α-D-glucose-1-phosphate, dTTP, and NADPH, produced dTDP-Rha. (1)H NMR measurements confirmed that both RmlA/RmlB/RmlC/Tal/WbiB(Bth) and RmlA/RmlB/RmlC/RmlD produced dTDP-Rha. WbiB(Bth) alone produced dTDP-Rha when incubated with dTDP-6dTal. This is the first report to demonstrate epimerase activity interconverting between dTDP-Rha and dTDP-6dTal.

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N-Methylimidazolium chloride is found to catalyze a coupling reaction between monophosphates and activated phosphorous-nitrogen intermediates such as a phosphorimidazolide and phosphoromorpholidate to form biologically important unsymmetrical pyrophosphate diesters. The catalyst is much more active, cheaper, and less explosive than 1H-tetrazole, known as the best catalyst for the pyrophosphate formation over a decade. The mild and neutral reaction conditions are compatible with allylic pyrophosphate formation in Lipid I syntheisis. (31)P NMR experiments suggest that the catalyst acts not only as an acid but also as a nucleophile to form cationic and electrophilic phosphor-N-methylimidazolide intermediates in the pyrophosphate formation.

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The plant VTC2 gene encodes GDP-L-galactose phosphorylase, a rate-limiting enzyme in plant vitamin C biosynthesis. Genes encoding apparent orthologs of VTC2 exist in both mammals, which produce vitamin C by a distinct metabolic pathway, and in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans where vitamin C biosynthesis has not been demonstrated. We have now expressed cDNAs of the human and worm VTC2 homolog genes (C15orf58 and C10F3.4, respectively) and found that the purified proteins also display GDP-hexose phosphorylase activity. However, as opposed to the plant enzyme, the major reaction catalyzed by these enzymes is the phosphorolysis of GDP-D-glucose to GDP and D-glucose 1-phosphate. We detected activities with similar substrate specificity in worm and mouse tissue extracts. The highest expression of GDP-D-glucose phosphorylase was found in the nervous and male reproductive systems. A C. elegans C10F3.4 deletion strain was found to totally lack GDP-D-glucose phosphorylase activity; this activity was also found to be decreased in human HEK293T cells transfected with siRNAs against the human C15orf58 gene. These observations confirm the identification of the worm C10F3.4 and the human C15orf58 gene expression products as the GDP-D-glucose phosphorylases of these organisms. Significantly, we found an accumulation of GDP-D-glucose in the C10F3.4 mutant worms, suggesting that the GDP-D-glucose phosphorylase may function to remove GDP-D-glucose formed by GDP-D-mannose pyrophosphorylase, an enzyme that has previously been shown to lack specificity for its physiological D-mannose 1-phosphate substrate. We propose that such removal may prevent the misincorporation of glucosyl residues for mannosyl residues into the glycoconjugates of worms and mammals.

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BACKGROUND: Significant differences in G+C content between different isochore types suggest that the nucleosome positioning patterns in DNA of the isochores should be different as well. RESULTS: Extraction of the patterns from the isochore DNA sequences by Shannon N-gram extension reveals that while the general motif YRRRRRYYYYYR is characteristic for all isochore types, the dominant positioning patterns of the isochores vary between TAAAAATTTTTA and CGGGGGCCCCCG due to the large differences in G+C composition. This is observed in human, mouse and chicken isochores, demonstrating that the variations of the positioning patterns are largely G+C dependent rather than species-specific. The species-specificity of nucleosome positioning patterns is revealed by dinucleotide periodicity analyses in isochore sequences. While human sequences are showing CG periodicity, chicken isochores display AG (CT) periodicity. Mouse isochores show very weak CG periodicity only. CONCLUSIONS: Nucleosome positioning pattern as revealed by Shannon N-gram extension is strongly dependent on G+C content and different in different isochores. Species-specificity of the pattern is subtle. It is reflected in the choice of preferentially periodical dinucleotides.

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