Breeanna R Urbanowicz, Vivek S Bharadwaj, Markus Alahuhta, Maria J Peña, Vladimir V Lunin, Yannick J Bomble, Shuo Wang, Jeong-Yeh Yang, Sami T Tuomivaara, Michael E Himmel, Kelley W Moremen, William S York, Michael F Crowley
The mechanistic underpinnings of the complex process of plant polysaccharide biosynthesis are poorly understood, largely because of the resistance of glycosyltransferase (GT) enzymes to structural characterization. In Arabidopsis thaliana, a glycosyl transferase family 37 (GT37) fucosyltransferase 1 (AtFUT1) catalyzes the regiospecific transfer of terminal 1,2-fucosyl residues to xyloglucan side chains - a key step in the biosynthesis of fucosylated sidechains of galactoxyloglucan. We unravel the mechanistic basis for fucosylation by AtFUT1 with a multipronged approach involving protein expression, X-ray crystallography, mutagenesis experiments and molecular simulations...
September 2017: Plant Journal