4ap6

Publication Abstract from PubMed

Protein O-fucosylation is a post-translational modification found on serine/threonine residues of thrombospondin type 1 repeats (TSR). The fucose transfer is catalysed by the enzyme protein O-fucosyltransferase 2 (POFUT2) and >40 human proteins contain the TSR consensus sequence for POFUT2-dependent fucosylation. To better understand O-fucosylation on TSR, we carried out a structural and functional analysis of human POFUT2 and its TSR substrate. Crystal structures of POFUT2 reveal a variation of the classical GT-B fold and identify sugar donor and TSR acceptor binding sites. Structural findings are correlated with steady-state kinetic measurements of wild-type and mutant POFUT2 and TSR and give insight into the catalytic mechanism and substrate specificity. By using an artificial mini-TSR substrate, we show that specificity is not primarily encoded in the TSR protein sequence but rather in the unusual 3D structure of a small part of the TSR. Our findings uncover that recognition of distinct conserved 3D fold motifs can be used as a mechanism to achieve substrate specificity by enzymes modifying completely folded proteins of very wide sequence diversity and biological function.

Structure of human POFUT2: insights into thrombospondin type 1 repeat fold and O-fucosylation.,Chen CI, Keusch JJ, Klein D, Hess D, Hofsteenge J, Gut H EMBO J. 2012 May 15. doi: 10.1038/emboj.2012.143. PMID:22588082^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.