40 research outputs found
Muscular Dystrophy And Neuronal Migration Disorder Caused By Mutations In A Glycosyltransferase, Pomgnt1
Muscle-eye-brain disease (MEB) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by congenital muscular dystrophy, ocular abnormalities, and lissencephaly. Mammalian O-mannosyl glycosylation is a rare type of protein modification that is observed in a limited number of glycoproteins of brain, nerve, and skeletal muscle. Here we isolated a human cDNA for protein O-mannose beta-1,2-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (POMGnT1) which participates in O-mannosyl glycan synthesis. We also identified six independent mutations of the POMGnT1 gene in six patients with MEB. Expression of most frequent mutation revealed a great loss of the enzymatic activity. These findings suggest that interference in O-mannosyl glycosylation is a new pathomechanism for muscular dystrophy as well as neuronal migration disorder.WoSScopu
Structural and Mechanistic Insights into Lunatic Fringe from a Kinetic Analysis of Enzyme Mutants*S⃞
The Notch receptor is critical for proper development where it orchestrates
numerous cell fate decisions. The Fringe family of
β1,3-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferases are regulators of this
pathway. Fringe enzymes add N-acetylglucosamine to O-linked
fucose on the epidermal growth factor repeats of Notch. Here we have analyzed
the reaction catalyzed by Lunatic Fringe (Lfng) in detail. A mutagenesis
strategy for Lfng was guided by a multiple sequence alignment of Fringe
proteins and solutions from docking an epidermal growth factor-like
O-fucose acceptor substrate onto a homology model of Lfng. We
targeted three main areas as follows: residues that could help resolve where
the fucose binds, residues in two conserved loops not observed in the
published structure of Manic Fringe, and residues predicted to be involved in
UDP-N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) donor specificity. We utilized a
kinetic analysis of mutant enzyme activity toward the small molecule acceptor
substrate 4-nitrophenyl-α-l-fucopyranoside to judge their
effect on Lfng activity. Our results support the positioning of
O-fucose in a specific orientation to the catalytic residue. We also
found evidence that one loop closes off the active site coincident with, or
subsequent to, substrate binding. We propose a mechanism whereby the ordering
of this short loop may alter the conformation of the catalytic aspartate.
Finally, we identify several residues near the UDP-GlcNAc-binding site, which
are specifically permissive toward UDP-GlcNAc utilization