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Strategy for the fine characterization of glycosyltransferase specificity using isotopomer assembly

Nature Methods volume 4, pages 577–582 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Glycosylation, which represents the most complex posttranslational modification (PTM) event during protein maturation, has a vital role in biological processes. Glycan biosynthesis is orchestrated by numerous glycosyltransferases, each displaying different selectivities for multiple reaction sites. The precise specificities of these enzymes have been difficult to study because of the lack of available substrates of defined structure and problems associated with the analyses. Moreover, the analysis of glycans is extremely difficult owing to the structural complexity of the glycan chain. Here we describe a new strategy for the fine characterization of enzyme specificity using substrate isotopomer assemblies. Because isotopomer assemblies contain a sugar residue that is position-specifically labeled with a stable isotope, we can use tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) to assign the structure of positional isomers generated by glycosylation. We demonstrated the analysis of substrate specificities of five β4-galactosyltransferases (β4GalT-I, -II, -III, -IV and -V) using our strategy.

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Figure 1: Strategy for fine characterization of glycosyltransferase specificities using isotopomer assembly.
Figure 2: Systematic preparation of the isotopomer assemblies for the complex-type N-glycan using selected N-acetylglucosaminyltransferases.
Figure 3: HPLC and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry analysis of reaction products generated by glycosylation of the isotopomer assemblies using recombinant human β4GalT-I.
Figure 4: Determination of galactose-attachment sites of the reaction products by tandem MS.
Figure 5: Quantitative analysis of mono-galactosylated compounds by HPLC.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Kiyohara for assistance with preparation of enzymes. This work was performed as a part of the R&D Project of the Industrial Science and Technology Frontier Program supported by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

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Author notes

  1. Hide-Ki Ishida

    Present address: Present address: Glyco Synthetic Lab., Tokyo Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. 6-15-9 Toshima, Kita-ku, Tokyo 114-0003, Japan.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Glycogene Function Team of Research Center for Glycoscience, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, 305-8568, Ibaraki, Japan

    Hiromi Ito, Akihiko Kameyama, Takashi Sato, Masako Sukegawa & Hisashi Narimatsu

  2. The Noguchi Institute, 1-8-1, Kaga, Itabashi-ku, 173-0003, Tokyo, Japan

    Hide-Ki Ishida

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Correspondence to Hisashi Narimatsu.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Summary of the strategy used to determine the Gal-attachment sites of the reaction products by a tandem MS technique. (PDF 2497 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Time-course of galactosylation by human β4GalTs. (PDF 3904 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

Analysis of the product generated from the fucosylation of bi-antennary N-glycan (1) with recombinant human FUT2 (α1,2 fucosyltransferase). (PDF 1334 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 4

Analysis of the product generated from the fucosylation of bi-antennary N-glycan (1) with recombinant human FUT4 (β1,3 fucosyltransferase). (PDF 1317 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Summary of observed m/z values in Supplementary Figure 1. (PDF 1466 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 117 kb)

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Ito, H., Kameyama, A., Sato, T. et al. Strategy for the fine characterization of glycosyltransferase specificity using isotopomer assembly. Nat Methods 4, 577–582 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth1050

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