Title : Structure of human POFUT2 : insights into thrombospondin type 1 repeat fold and O-fucosylation.
Abstract :
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 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